As you make your to do list for today, write down, “Buy Washington Square Serenade.” Steve Earle’s first studio recording of new songs in three years is worth every dime.
For those of you who don’t know him, Steve’s first record, Guitar Town, came out in 1986 to rave reviews and afforded him fame that almost killed him, literally. His addictions took him apart and put him in prison for a time. What he has pulled from the ashes of that existence is a thoughtful presence, a tenacious spirit, and some wonderful music. His latest recording chronicles his move from Nashville to New York City and his marriage to fellow singer Allison Moorer. (Yes, she is quite a bit younger.)
The single from the record is “City of Immigrants,” which reflects the spirit of the whole project. (The video is a performance on Letterman.)
Livin’ in a city of immigrants I don’t need to go travelin’ Open my door and the world walks in Livin’ in a city of immigrants
Livin’ in a city that never sleeps My heart keepin’ time to a thousand beats Singin’ in languages I don’t speak Livin’ in a city of immigrants
City of black City of white City of light City of innocents
City of sweat City of tears City of prayers City of immigrants
Livin’ in a city where the dreams of men Reach up to touch the sky and then Tumble back down to earth again Livin’ in a city that never quits
Livin’ in a city where the streets are paved With good intentions and a people’s faith In the sacred promise a statue made Livin’ in a city of immigrants
City of stone City of steel City of wheels Constantly spinnin’
City of bone City of skin City of pain City of immigrants
All of us are immigrants Every daughter, every son Everyone is everyone All of us are immigrants – everyone
Livin’ in a city of immigrants River flows out and the sea rolls in Washin’ away nearly all of my sins Livin’ in a city of immigrants
City of black City of white City of light Livin’ in a city of immigrants
City of sweat City of tears City of prayers Livin’ in a city of immigrants
City of stone City of steel City of wheels Livin’ in a city of immigrants
City of bone City of skin City of pain City of immigrants All of us are immigrants
Though I was flying home alone from Durham last Thursday night, I was not by myself. Seated next to me in the exit row was a large man who actually needed the extra leg room and who quickly fell asleep; across the aisle sat a couple who each had a puzzle book to work as they flew. And, about twenty minutes into the hour and a half flight, I became aware of the little boy sitting behind me who, evidently, was quite proud of both his singing voice and his command of the alphabet:
a, b, c – ellaminnowpea q, r, s – ellaminnowpea x, y, z – ELLAMINNOWPEA
His mother spoke to him several times in a maternal corrective whisper, but to no avail. He simply changed his tune:
LA LA LA (I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy) LA LA LA (I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy)
He was a little kid on a plane being a little kid. He was happy, he was learning, and he had a pretty good voice. I’m sure it never crossed his mind that anyone around him might not share those sentiments. I’m grateful none of us adults who sat near him felt the need to tell him anything different than what he knew was true in his childlike heart. Somewhere in our muscle memory we resonated with his version of the alphabet song. (Is there a better run of letters than L M N O P?) I know I wished for the kind of abandon that would let me sing out, “I’m happy, I’m happy, I’m happy.”
Though not yet verbal, the baby that sat across the aisle from me in church yesterday with her mother was singing the same song. She bubbled and cooed through most of the service, throwing in a gleeful squeal every now and then for good measure. When we reached the closing hymn, I couldn’t help but feel the words as a prayer:
Come, Thou, Fount of Every Blessing, Tune my heart to sing thy grace . . .
At least those are the words I know. Our UCC hymnal is one whose compilers felt driven to revise for several reasons, some (to me) more valid than others. So their opening lines read,
Come, O Fount of Every Blessing, Tune my heart to sing your grace . . .
I know it’s a small change, but it’s just the beginning. The one that really gets me is the second stanza, which revised reads,
Here I pause in my sojourning, giving thanks for having come, Come to trust at every turning, God will guide me safely home.
Those aren’t the words. The changes here are significant because they remove a wonderful image, even if it does need some explaining:
Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come. And I hope by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.
The power of symbol is it packages the weight of memory and hope in way it can be carried across the miles and the years. Sure, in my junior high days, “here I raise mine Ebenezer” made us snicker as we played that good old Baptist adolescent worship service game, “Under the Sheets,” where you simply added the words “under the sheets” to the end of hymn titles with some humorous results:
O, for a Thousand Tongues to Sing . . . Love Lifted Me . . . I Surrender All . . .
And as I sang and chuckled, the words worked their way into my mind and heart and stayed until I could ask what an Ebenezer was with a straight face. The reference is from 1 Samuel 7:12:
Samuel took a single rock and set it upright between Mizpah and Shen. He named it “Ebenezer” (Rock of Help), saying, “This marks the place where God helped us.” (The Message)
One of the ways we tune our hearts is by matching the tone of faith that resonates down from the generations that have come before. The little soprano voice that sang “ellaminnowpea” so enthusiastically will learn more and more about where those letters can take him as he finds them shaped and gathered in the words of those who have preceded him. Those letters will teach him about Pegasus, Moses, The Little Prince, Eyeore, and Milton (John, that is), among other things. Billy Joel began his song, “Summer Highland Falls” with the words:
They say that these are not the best of times, but they’re the only times I’ve ever known; and I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own.
The crash of emotion in those few lines has pulled me since the first time I heard them. That we are aware that these are the only times we’ve ever known should pull us to notice the Ebenzers standing tall across the landscape, making sure to remember the stories, rather than knocking them all over for our own construction projects. It is hither by the help of the other runners in the human race that we have come thus far, as well. Joel concluded:
How thoughtlessly we dissipate our energies, perhaps we don’t fulfill each other’s fantasies, and as we stand upon the ledges of our lives with our respective similarities: it’s either sadness or euphoria.
The melody of faith is more complex and more nuanced that his polarity. From the sadness to the euphoria and all of life in between, the hymn calls us to pray, with gratitude:
O, to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be; Let thy goodness like a fetter bind my wandering heart to thee.
Yesterday, Ginger and I made our annual trek up to Newburyport for their Fall Festival, a wonderful community celebration. We got there in time to see the bluegrass band play their first song – my favorite song – “Angel from Montgomery.” The last verse of that song says:
There’s flies in the kitchen – I can hear ‘em a buzzin’ and I ain’t done nothing since I woke up today. How the hell can a person go to work in the morning and come home every evening and have nothing to say?
A little girl, not old enough yet to know Ella Minnow Pea, danced across the stones in front of the stage as they sang, twirling with total abandon, incarnating the depth of the song’s question. Whether morning or evening, coming or going, working or playing, let us answer together in song:
Prone to wonder, Lord I feel it: prone to leave the God I love. Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for thy courts above.
Peace, Milton The video and recording is Sufjan Stevens.
The clue for 41 Down in the “difficult” crossword in Spirit, the in flight magazine of Southwest Airlines was “golden rule word”: unto, as in do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Jesus’ words are as obvious as they are wise. We, as a people, however, often have to be reminded of the obvious.
When the schedule at work operates as it usually does, Sous and I follow each other working the fish station. The normal flow of a shift is to arrive around two, figure out what needs to be prepped, prep it, work the dinner service, do all you can to be ready for the next day, and clean up the area. The cold top on the line has twenty-two bins, each one containing an item, a sauce, or a garnish for one or more of our dishes. On the fish station, I’m talking about bolognaise sauce, curry sauce, julienned peppers, julienned snow peas, julienned portabella mushrooms, heavy cream, sliced shallots, diced butter, Raye’s Seadog mustard, chopped garlic, chives, diced roasted tomatoes, whole roasted tomatoes, basil chiffonade, chopped tarragon, lime wedges, grated Romano cheese, and sliced chorizo.
That’s just the top. We have four cold drawers. One for pasta, lobster meat, ravioli, and back ups; one with spinach, gnocchi, Swiss chard, green beans, and mashed potato cakes; one with mussels, crostini, and more back ups; and one with the raw fish, shrimp, and scallops. Much of the prep needs to be done fresh everyday, so making sure the other stuff is stocked when we finish a shift makes the next day a little less hectic.
All of that to say, one of the other line cooks preceded me on the fish station Thursday night instead of Sous. He normally works the grill, but moved over because of some necessary schedule changes. When he works the grill (a station he shares with Chef), he makes sure everything is backed up and ready for when Chef comes in. He doesn’t share the same work ethic when he works other stations. I got to work yesterday to find my station clean, mostly empty, and disorganized. It took me an hour just to get it back in shape so I could do my regular prep work. My colleague would not have known the answer to 41 Down.
We buy the wines we use for cooking at the restaurant by the box because of the sheer volume of liquid we use. The box of white wine at my station is the equivalent of twelve bottles. It’s good wine – it’s just in a box with a spigot on the bottom. The Marsala wine at Chef’s station has a notation on the side that reads, “Tilt box forward to get last drop.” Chef showed it to me one day, smiling, and said, “Gee, I’m glad they told me.” One of our running jokes, when I get to the end of my box, is to say, “Man, I wish I knew how to get that last little bit out of my wine, but there aren’t any instructions.” (Ah – chef humor. Sigh.)
If Jesus had been a cook, which I’m sure will be discovered in the next round of discovered scrolls, he might have elaborated on doing unto by reminding his listeners someone always follows us, whatever our station in life. When we’re doing and cleaning and prepping, we need to remember the one who comes next will be directly affected by how we do our jobs. At the end of our shifts we need to be able to remember what it felt like to be the one coming in to the empty bins at the beginning of the shift, rather than allowing ourselves to only feel the exhaustion that comes with wanting to finish quickly and get home.
OK, so maybe Jesus wouldn’t have said it quite that way, so I will. We are 41 Down kind of people: we spend our lives doing unto, whether or not we do so intentionally. At the risk of stating the painfully obvious, we need to live like we’re being followed.
I was going to write this morning, but I got to reading the annual Southern music issue of the Oxford American, which comes with an amazing CD. The periodical is a labor of love and excellence, and certainly worth a look. Check out this piece on yodeling by Roy Blount, Jr.; “The People’s Singer,” a chronicle of the life of Lee Hays, a founding member of The Weavers, along with Pete Seeger; and “Mystic Nights,” a memoir of Bob Dylan’s recording of Blonde on Blonde in Nashville. The articles taught me, challenged me, moved me.
Good people doing great work: that’s always worth noticing.
Here are The Weavers singing, “Goodnight, Irene” from 1949.
One of the ideas that continues to intrigue and haunt me is that most of the world lives their lives without knowing or knowing of me and they don’t miss me either. I even posted a poem about it called “Spokane.” This morning, I’m sitting in Foster’s Market and Café in Durham, which has been not-knowing-or-missing-Milton territory until recently. I flew down yesterday to begin looking for work and to look at houses, trying to find a way to begin to make a place for myself in a place that doesn’t know they need to make room for me. It’s a little like trying to get in sync with a jump rope that is already going in circles, something I never quite got the hang of.
And it’s not like that. The last twenty-four hours, my journey has been fueled by the incredible kindness of those who are determined to make it seem as if there has always been a place for me here. I talked to a one chef who not only talked about the possibility of my working in his restaurant, but also gave me the name of another guy he thought would be worth contacting. The interim minister at the church where Ginger will pastor picked me up at the airport and gave me her car to use while I’m here. The realtor we have been working with here changed her schedule to show me some houses and also spent a great deal of time creating conversations with people to help us figure out what to do since our house in Marshfield has not sold. And, of course, the members of the Triangle Red Sox Nation were more than welcoming as we gathered to watch the Sox beat the Angels last night.
I had two extended interviews/conversations about cooking gigs yesterday at two of Durham’s best offerings as far as restaurants go. At the first, the kitchen was bustling and informal. The Sous Chef who interviewed me, was wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He moved to Durham a few years back and understood what it feels like to try and break into to a new place.
“We don’t have anything right now, but you know this business. I have a full kitchen today and might have an empty one tomorrow. But when you get here, if you haven’t found anything, let me know. I’ll find a way to throw you a couple of shifts until you get your feet on the ground.” He then gave me the name of a couple of guys he had met when he first came to town that helped him get started.
The second interview was quite a contrast. On Tuesday I sent my resume in an email note to the chef of a fine dining restaurant here telling him I was coming to town. He wrote back and asked me to stop by and talk to him. This is a guy who trained with Emeril before he was a celebrity chef and worked alongside Charlie Trotter, who easily makes the top five list nationally. When I got to his place, everyone was in chef whites and focused. He changes the entire menu monthly and they were getting ready for a tasting for the wait staff so they could be informed as they served people that evening. The conversation with him was much more focused and intense. I think I intrigued him because I was much older than the usual applicant and not fresh out of culinary school. He was not off-putting and he maintained a professional distance. As I watched him interact with his staff, I could see the distance was more about him than me. As we talked he said, “I don’t have anything right now, but you know this business: the kitchen is full now but might be empty tomorrow.” He also said, “I imagine this is not your only interview. If you would like my take on some of the other places in town as you talk to them, I would be glad to give you some feedback.” He told me to keep in touch and then invited me to come and observe the tasting so I could see some of the food. He took nearly a half an hour to describe the twelve or fourteen offerings on the new menu; he talked as the wait staff descended on the food like hungry hyenas, chewing and laughing at the same time. His collection and combinations of ingredients were both imaginative and brilliant. (Baked oysters with smoked vanilla cream!)
As I was drinking my coffee this morning, I browsed through Bridge to the Soul, Coleman Barks’ new collection of translations of Rumi’s poetry in honor of Rumi’s eight hundredth birthday. In the introductory essay, Barks talks about his love of bridges and focuses on a bridge somewhere in Iran (I think) of which it is said the concrete was made with a mixture of sand and egg whites. He went on to talk about the imagination it takes to build a bridge, and to build a bridge that lasts.
Each step of the way on this journey from Marshfield to Durham reveals another ingredient in the bridge required to get from there to here. Each step lifts just enough of the fog for us to see the next step, and to see the bridge is there, though we cannot take in the entire span. Much like the mixture of stone and egg white, we are called to step out on the combination of resolve and faith that reveals all that connects our lives to one another.
The prompt from Writers’ Island this week was “The Journey.” I have no idea how I got from there to here, but here’s the poem — and I couldn’t pass up the video.
drinking beer with bob dylan
It’s late and we are sitting in a tavern I know well but can’t name. “Oh, where have you been my brown-eyed son?” he asks and smiles – I think it’s a smile. I laugh a little and look at my shoes, the ones I wear to work each day, black and wrinkled, with specks of something on one of the toes.
“I’ve lived in the darkness they call my depression. I’ve cooked for a living and cooked out of loving. I come home to a woman who makes me feel wanted. I’ve written and planted and broken and hoped for. I’ve traveled the world without leaving my city. I’ve let myself dream what just might never happen. I’ve staked my whole life on a faith that’s elusive. I’ve stood under the stars to give thanks that I’m breathing.”
He turns up his mug and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “You would think, after forty-five years, I would have a new question,” he says, “but there’s seems nothing else to ask.” I look at his hands, now arthritic and unable to play the guitar; only the piano. Still, he plays and sings.
He is sixty-six; I, soon, will be fifty-one; both of us just past the five and dime birthdays that are so heartily celebrated. Between us, we have over a century of stories and so we sit long into the night telling them, until the bartender tells us he has a journey of his own and sends us out into what is left of it.
It would have been perfect if a hard rain had begun to fall, but it didn’t. We stood there in the chill of a petulant night resisting the dawn, and realized we would not see each other again. He’s not much of a hugger, so I didn’t even try. “Thanks for the beers,” he said, as the lights went out. I stood and watched as he slipped into the darkness.
Yesterday was our Schnauzer Lola’s seventh birthday and my brother’s forty-ninth. (I suppose that makes them the same age.) Today, my friend Doug is fifty years old. By coincidence, today also marks my four hundred and fiftieth post since beginning this blog on December 27, 2005. Eliot said we measure our life in coffee spoons; I’ve measured mine in recipes and blog posts for the past couple of years. I think of the posts a little like the marks my dad used to make on the door jamb to let us see how we had grown. I didn’t always feel taller, but the marks gave me external evidence that I was growing and changing.
Marking this milestone borders on being overly self-congratulatory, I think, and is also worthy of note, for me at least. Like Doug’s birthday, my blog count marks a place on the journey I have never been before. As much as measurements are about what has been, they are perhaps even more about what is possible. Doug has never been on the planet as long as he has today. I’ve never written as much as I have now. Each new moment is uncharted territory for us all.
The Romans’ numbering system grew out of notches they made as they counted. They weren’t thinking in letters; they were making marks to show their progress. Now we use them for tombstones, the periodic table of elements, the Super Bowl, and Wrestlemania. Go figure.
One of the books I go back to from time to time is Dag Hammarskjöld’s Markings. He was Secretary General of the United Nations, among other things in his life, as well as a man of deep faith and integrity. Here are a few of the marks he left for us:
He who has surrendered himself to it knows that the Way ends on the Cross — even when it is leading him through the jubilation of Gennesaret or the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Do not seek death. Death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible — not to have run away.
Never, “for the sake of peace and quiet,” deny your own experience or convictions. Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was.
Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity — intellectual, emotional, and moral. Respect for the word — to employ it with scrupulous care and in incorruptible heartfelt love of truth — is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.
We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.
For all that has been — Thanks. For all that shall be — Yes.
One of my tasks in preparing to move is to go through my CDs and transfer the bulk of them to my MacBook instead of boxing them all up to head south. I’ve invested a lot of money in CDs over the years, collecting a good bit of interest, though not of the monetary kind. I’ve spent the better part of the day in the D through G section of our collection and have downloaded music from almost one hundred of the silver discs, finding some old friends, bringing up some wonderful memories, and raising some interesting questions. (Who is the Willard Grant Conspiracy and why do I have one of their records?) Cliff Eberhardt is a singer/songwriter I learned about soon after moving to Boston, thanks to David Wilcox’s covers of a couple of his songs. I hadn’t listened to The Long Road in a long time. The title track is a wonderful duet with Richie Havens (one of the best voices ever) and the lyric says:
There are the ones that you call friends. There are the ones that you call late at night. There are the ones who sweep away your past With one wave of their hand.
There are the ones that you call family. There are the ones that you hold close to your heart. They are the ones who see the danger in you Who won’t understand.
I can hear your voice in the wind. Are you calling to me, down the long road? Do you really think there’s an end? I have followed my dream Down the long road.
You are the one that I met long ago. You are the one who saw my dream. You are the one, took me from my home And left me off somewhere.
Somehow I feel you are here And you are waiting in that dream. And somewhere down this road we will awake And be at the start again.
I can hear your voice in the wind. Are you calling to me, down the long road? Do you really think there’s an end? I have lived my whole life Down the long road.
I gotta find you tonight. Are you waiting for me, down the long road? Do you really think there’s an end? I have lived my whole life Down the long road.
Are you waiting for me? I can hear your voice in the wind. Are you calling to me, down the long road? Do you really think there’s an end? I have lived my whole life Down the long road.
In these days of change, when some things are moving faster than we can keep up with and others not moving at all (anyone want to buy a house at the beach?), the question in the song is haunting:
Do you really think there’s an end?
I think I have lived my whole life down the long road. Now, it stretches out again and turns so quickly and so sharply that we can’t see much more than a few steps ahead. We are going to have to make some important and difficult choices without knowing how the terrain is going as we make the turn.
Ginger did a great job on Sunday shedding fresh light on Peter and John’s encounter with the man at the gate. “We don’t have any money,” they said (I’m with them so far), “but what we have we’ll gladly give. In the name of Jesus, get up and walk.”
What healing work can we do in Jesus’ name, is the way I heard what she was saying.
When I was in seminary and John Claypool was preaching, I heard someone criticize him by saying, “The only people who relate to him are the walking wounded and those trapped in adolescent rebellion.”
Without really thinking, I looked at the guy and said, “Who’s left?”
We have all spent our whole lives on the long road. The most consistent daily act of healing we can do in Jesus’ name is to get up and walk: walk into the middle of our families and friends and work places and schools and wherever else we walk and offer ourselves.
Our burning bush is just starting to singe around the edges. Before long without smoke or fire, the leaves will blaze brilliantly without burning up and fall to the earth.
We talk about colors, yet name this season for the letting go, the breeze-ride down from life into death.
How can it be so energizing to see what was once verdant and vibrant flame and die?
I try to listen. I want to hear what the leaves are saying as they burn and fall.
On the way home from church to go to work, I heard the end of this interview with Emmylou Harris on NPR. She has a new boxed set out of rare tracks and unreleased material that I am now coveting in the worst way. One of the songs she sang during the interview (accompanied by Buddy Miller) was “Boy from Tupelo”:
You don’t love me this I know Don’t need a Bible to tell me so I hung around a little too long I was good but now I’m gone
Like the buffalo That boy from Tupelo Any way the wind can blow That’s where I’m gonna go I’ll be gone like a five and dime It’ll be the perfect crime Just ask the boy from Tupelo He’s the king and he ought to know
The shoulder I’ve been leaning on Is the coldest place I’ve ever known There’s nothing left for me round here Looks like it’s time to dissapear
Like the buffalo That boy from Tupelo The old wall down in Jericho Maybelle on the radio I’ll be gone like the five and dime It’ll be the perfect crime Just ask the boy from Tupelo He’s the king and he ought to know
You don’t love me, this I know Don’t need a Bible to tell me so It’s a shame and it’s a sin Everything I could have been to you
Your last chance Texaco Your sweetheart of the rodeo A Juliet to your Romeo The border you cross into Mexico I’ll never understand why or how Oh but baby its too late now Just ask the boy from Tupelo He’s the king and he ought to know
In looking at the play list for the songs on the CDs, I found this one, which seems worth passing along. It’s called “Prayer in Open D.”
There’s a valley of sorrow in my soul Where every night I hear the thunder roll Like the sound of a distant gun Over all the damage I have done And the shadows filling up this land Are the ones I built with my own hand There is no comfort from the cold Of this valley of sorrow in my soul
There’s a river of darkness in my blood And through every vein I feel the flood I can find no bridge for me to cross No way to bring back what is lost Into the night it soon will sweep Down where all my grievances I keep But it won’t wash away the years Or one single hard and bitter tear
And the rock of ages I have known Is a weariness down in the bone I use to ride it like a rolling stone Now just carry it alone
There’s a highway risin’ from my dreams Deep in the heart I know it gleams For I have seen it stretching wide Clear across to the other side Beyond the river and the flood And the valley where for so long I’ve stood With the rock of ages in my bones Someday I know it will lead me home
As you make your to do list for today, write down, “Buy Washington Square Serenade.” Steve Earle’s first studio recording of new songs in three years is worth every dime.
