As I write this my life has resumed some level of normalcy, as I experienced that great American archetypical tradition of cursing your way through mowing your grass and dealing with weeds and washing your car. I am officially 100% fed up with the condition of my yard and its billions of mosquito inhabitants but that may be the least interesting subject known to man, so I will table it.
What follows are the few passages written in Andorra and beyond, which I can't remember since I don't religiously title the posts with locations and times. At any rate you will notice a certain tone that says, "readjusting to home country, conflicting emotions result." Indeed. I also think that Jim Morrison may have just been talking about Los Angeles and is using L'america as some sort of sly pun. But what is written remains. In the words of Yul Bryner as Ramses, "So let it be written, so let it be done."
It appears that this blog still exists. Interesting.
2 August 2012, La
Massana, Principality of Andorra, 1235 hrs.
To begin with the usual corrections: I know nothing about
Holland and have nothing against it, Beckenbauer is a German anyway, and who
cares about that. That last post was so extensive that I barely edited it at
all, and it was late, and I was in the lobby of the hotel I’m not really
staying in as you’ll see.
Andorra is actually a co-principality since there is a
French prince involved (he hasn’t been showing himself much) and there is an
Andorran prince, or something. Yawn. A guy at the nature center who was also a
ski instructor with minor halitosis gave us an impromptu lesson on Andorran
history. Yesterday we did a hike in the El Serrat area to a lovely 15 degree
Celcius lake called Estany Blau. It was pretty interesting because Andorra is
small enough that we inadvertently hiked into France, which was evident as
people on the trail greeted us in Castilian, Catalan, and then French. All
within a few hours, and the languages were changing. We went to the lake with
packed bocadillos, the usual chorizo, olive oil, good bread, and some cheese
that comprises the typical Spanish sandwich. Both of us got in the lake, which
was deep and clear, although I lasted about one minute since I am cold natured.
The flies were everywhere since they had not seen a human in some time, but I managed
to fall asleep on a rock, this time with my pants as a pillow instead of
American literature, which was one hundred times better than the Forum (and
there were no people in sight, much less Peruvian festivals or screaming
children). Coming back we heard lots of cowbells and wondered where they were,
only to see a herd appear right on the path. Luckily they didn’t get spooked
and try to charge us and we passed through without incident. It was nice and
just what we came for, no sign of urban blight or Pakistanis selling mojitos.
(The beaches in Barceloneta, while flush with naked women, are swarmed with mostly Pakistani guys hawking
“cervezabeer” or “icecoldmojitooo,” which got old). It was even cold, which is
unbelievable compared to the rest of the summer. I managed to get sunburn again
even though I wore my 50 SPF clown makeup sunscreen that has the consistency of
shoe polish. It is painful to rub in, or impossible.
Since we are marooned at the Hotel Font, a hotel that has
fought very, very hard to earn its two stars- I think they just gave it two
stars because the rooms have two beds- (although a lady in a restaurant told us
it should really be one star), we have to hang out in the lobby of the Magic
Massana, which is not a fortune teller but the sister hotel up the street. It
is always funny whenever we ask for anything since there is no reception,
telephone, WiFi, or anything here at the Font. The Font residents are treated
as second class citizens. Last night we mentioned that we have only paid for
three nights of parking and we are staying for four, and the concierge
mentioned that we could just settle when we checked out, until he found out
that we were actually guests at the Font. “Ohhh. Well. If you’re at the Font…”
Once
that was known, it was time to pay right then or else. Also, the so called free
swimming pool costs 6 Euros and you have to wear a swim cap and goggles. It is
always open anyway so we plan to just sneak in. They can’t kill us. There is
also a sauna and steam that I plan to surreptitiously use for free. I mean, we
are paying all of $25 a night. We are entitled to free use of the other hotel
that we have to check with to do anything, right?
Last night in the Magic lobby, while using their WiFi and in
the glow of the better version of the Font, we happened upon a group of Dutch
geezers who were all merrymaking and singing and carrying on in Dutch. There is
an Irish bar in the lobby, even though they play bad DJ tracks that seem to be
overly prevalent here (and in Spain). I have heard the same songs everywhere I
go, whether it is in a café, bank, grocery store, or a bar/restaurant. Everyone
seems to have the same playlist. That is also getting old- I guess there is
only so much distribution to Europe from American pop factories and they get a
very small, terrible sample. So many of the songs have the exact same techno
beat, which sounds like Jamaican dancehall in its dominant feel, except with
quarter notes pounding on the bass drum, with the typical upbeat feel on the
high hat. In other words, the cookie cutter electronic beat that you have heard
a thousand times, from Trent Reznor on down. They also don’t say techno
anymore, they say electro. To me electronica would be the more interesting
version, like Aphex Twin or something, and techno is something that is just the
bass drum quarter note thing that I just described, like you hear in an
aerobics class (no one uses that word anymore either, I assume). Once upon a
time there was a distinction between “house,” which had basic quarter notes
pounding like Daft Punk (not playing at my house) and “jungle” which was busier
and more drug influenced, I would say. I can’t think of an artist in the jungle
category since the only electronica I ever liked was DJ Shadow, but maybe
Spooky D or the Chemical Brothers would count at times.
This is the last full day in Andorra, and I plan to see some
more ancient churches and whatnot, even though I have been in so many old, old
buildings here in Europe, and I am a little exhausted of filling time with
cultural activities. Sometimes I just want to go see a movie or do very little,
or do something like exercise. Here it is a major shame that I am without a
bike, as there are serious (too serious for me right now) Coll d’Ordino, El
Serrat, etc. which look killer and brutal. We have driven these in the Mini and
you often have to downshift to 2nd and even 1st gear at
times, so imagine doing them on a bike. You see people doing those climbs, some
composed and with a sincere, consistent cadence, and some flailing, out of the
saddle in pain. Either way, if you trained here you’d be a beast pretty fast. Or
you would give up and stop cycling. The Tour de France has dipped into Andorra
a few times in its history- in the lobby of the Magic Massana- not here since
remember our lobby is a hallway with automatic lights and a phone for show-
they have signs from a previous tour on the wall.
The Olympics are underway and I have seen basically nothing
save the opening ceremonies in a bar in Barcelona where people were
cheering/booing each country as it came out. France was heavily booed. An
English guy booed the USA without knowing I was right behind him so I was
forced to pull the Saturday Night Live sarcastic clapping family move in his
direction. Last night I did turn it on in time for synchronized diving
(whatever), and China vs. China female table tennis (a curiosity from an alien
world). Then there was about ten minutes of gymnastics with Chinese 10 year
olds against Romanians and Americans and whoever else. Today France-Lithuania
basketball was on. There seems to be a badminton controversy that is shaking
the very foundations of the badminton community, according to the BBC World
Service here. Naturally, the Font TV looks like it was put in around 1987 and
has maybe 12” to it. The channel showing the Olympics is in French so it takes
a little away from the spectacle.
All right, time to get out of here since clearly I love this
hotel room so much!
August 10, 2012, 1800
hrs., Richmond VA, USA
I am back here in the same office where this started,
although it isn’t as hot somehow even though I can’t imagine how anyone lived
through this summer here since it seems unbearable. I feel like I am swimming
through the humidity and my body still doesn’t know what time it is after two
days.
The future is unwritten as Joe Strummer reminded us but I
may even continue this in some undetermined capacity as life observations can
still exist in your home country. So far it feels very slow and quiet here, and
people are not awake late. I was in Kroger last night around 9:30 and the place
was deserted, whereas in Spain it would be full of people and activity. The
cars look gigantic, yes I see more fat people suddenly, and all of the rooms in
my house seem capacious all of a sudden, most noticeably the shower. It is nice
not banging into the sides of the shower or having lights cut off randomly or
the water turn cold, all of which were common occurrences there. I DO miss already
the custom of sitting down and enjoying yourself in the evening, time that is
probably taken up in the US by being in a car, going to the gym, or running
errands. I do miss the language, strangely, as I enjoyed not necessarily
hearing everything that was said around me before. The world is quite mundane a lot of the time, when you understand everything. It feels strangely
alienating to go from place to place in a car and not even have the chance to
see someone else and speak to them.
All of that said I have not yet readjusted and I still feel
kind of like a stranger in my own country. It is normal when you’re away for so
long, and I don’t plan to disown the US, but it is very different and of course
not always for the better. I will say that writing this has lost some of its
luster as I suddenly feel a greater proximity to whoever might read it, like
why tell them here when I can speak to them in person. That, and I can be seen immediately, and am not masked on a different continent. The mundane necessities
(not the bear ones…best joke ever) have rejoined me full force as I was met
with a voluminous pile of mail and remembered commitments and responsibilities
that are too boring to list. There is cosmetic damage to the house since
monsoon season happened while I was away, and the yard resembles a feral
jungle. I can’t find my IPod. I have no idea where it is and there is a good
chance I’ll have to replace that along with the cell phone.
Suddenly, this is not interesting…I am in my house talking
about chores and to-do lists, not experiencing the world anew and learning.
What happened? I guess I have to find a way to do that here, as I do but why
share it, you are probably nearby and you know what I can see and do here.
With that I leave you uncertain of the future of the Peaches
en Regalia. I appreciate that so many people have actually read this. I know it
is hard for me, at least, to devote time to reading on the Internet, but maybe
I’m old fashioned and like the tactile sensation and the smell of dust that a book
affords.
Dust and literature have always gone together, as dust is the dead
skin off of your own face perhaps. Is it? I don’t know, not going to look it up
but think about it, the remnants of what comes off of you when you’re molting
or wilting physically on one level and maybe another if you feel like it,
that’s in the books in your library, the labyrinth of desires, fears, and
atrocities that all civilizations build in one way or another. Tolstoy wrote in
a study containing the couch that his mother, of course dead, gave birth to him
on. I can end sentences with prepositions when they contain such gravitas-
Tolstoy’s study contained the very weight of mortality and a physical presence
reminding him of the omnipresence of death within life. Death is not unreal as
it is the most real and obvious thing that can happen and it will happen to you!
We have removed it to morgues and hospitals but it is still here.
Death metal, however, it is not natural and should be
abolished.
VOTE ANDES…He’ll abolish parole and death metal! (Found on
the Draconian Party ticket)
Now for a change of tack…
TACT
STARBOARD TACK READY ABOUT
Whatever it is. Not looking it up.
Upon returning to the USA I also realized that my IPod had
mysteriously vanished, which I already said, and allow me to include that American music matters and
that trivial pop music and rock and roll from the United States have substance
and meaning and qualify as culture. It is fashionable, inexplicably, as this
happens even within our own borders, to decry the lack of civilization or
culture in the United States and denounce all of our institutions as vapid and
poorly conceived imitations of others. This may be true in some arenas of life,
whatever they are, like maybe in Las Vegas, which of course is a plastic city
with examples of things that actually exist somewhere else.
This is not true with music, at least popular music-
obviously Rigoletto the tragic clown opera is not the category I am discussing
here. Jazz, blues, soul, R and B, funk, rock and rock and all of its
iterations- all of that has its genesis in the very American continent, not to
mention Cajun, gospel, bluegrass, and countless other subgenres. I had this
realization when I was in Madrid listening a lot to the Doors album “L.A. Woman”
which has the Whitmanesque and hence bearded and beer-gutted Morrisonian rumination
on his native country, “L'america,” a song basically about reaping the
pleasures of excess on a virgin continent, rendering the freedom cliché into a
ravenous feast of consumption and delight in wealth and carnal abandon. In its
own way this was the musical equivalent of enjoying a hamburger (which are
typically worse in Spain) or a Coca-Cola (which is actually better). It is a
pirate fantasy of the land representing limitless possibility and self
discovery, a literal celebration of gold and beads. Being the Doors, it really
is more evocative as music, and despite Morrison’s gift for lyricism, this song
is more about the sounds and impulses than the denotation of its lyrics. I
cannot prove this. No one is verifying this.
On a different, more wholesome score, here back in the USA
when I have been without the schizophrenic IPod, always shuffling away from a
coherent theme and bastardizing any album you care to name just by the shuffle
function, I have been forced to listen to albums. I have listened to several of
course, but for some reason I have had the Best of the Beach Boys on a lot in
my car, an original album that came out on vinyl when the Beach Boys existed
and is probably about 35 minutes long. It contains a lot of their pre- “Pets
Sounds” hits from before the Brian Wilson genius period then breakdown, which
praise a different America that will probably never exist again. Being born in
1980 I am led to believe that young people sang about cars or motorbikes (“Little
Deuce Coupe,” “Little Honda”), surfing* , broken hearts (the sublime “The
Warmth of the Sun,” elegiac enough for a funeral), puppy love (“You’re So Good
to Me”) and even included their families and honoring their parents. If you
look past the roller coaster harmonies on the choruses of “Fun Fun Fun,” after
daddy has definitively taken the T-Bird away and the speaker or singer of the
song’s character realizes that this gives him a better chance of seeing the
lady in question, the song’s protagonist- she now has no car, so what choice
does she have- there is a backing vocal that sneakily says “you shouldn’t have
lied now.” NEVER in a million years would a song today that was about some sort
of modern equivalent of getting the T-Bird and lying about it type of rebellion
have some sort of concession or admonition like that, along with going to the
hamburger stand instead of the library like she told her old man. Similarly, on
the gorgeous “Kiss Me, Baby,” the singer tells us that he felt a tear driving
away from the monumental break up scene, then sugarcoated his feelings to his “folks”
before going to bed and tossing and turning, wondering if she was still awake
like him. Such a sentiment does not exist in our popular music anymore, I’m
sorry. Lastly, “The Warmth of the Sun,” another gossamer ballad sung by Brian
Wilson, contains some touching moments about the consolation in nature and
beauty of the world, the warmth of the sun that lingers after a sunset, even in isolation and with a broken heart. The songs dare to contain the freedom and
ecstasy of tears, the ability for unabashed roaring.
That is rare.
“In My Room” perhaps deserves special mention as it is one
of the most honest songs ever written about the isolation of adolescence, the
temple that is created in the bedroom when sudden individuality is necessary
and urgent, at the age when yearning is most acute and new. Maybe if you go to a mental institution this feeling comes back-
but at no other time in life is the bedroom such a sanctuary.
*The legend goes that the only Beach Boy that surfed was
Mike Love, and perhaps this is evident as a line on “Surfin’ USA” says “we can’t
wait for June.” Surfing is a year round sport, and in California the water isn’t
really warm in the summertime anyway. Here on the East Coast, the best surf of
the year is typically in the later fall and winter. Waiting for June…and it
will likely be flat. Then again, the Beach Boys were from California, where they don't have to rely on beach breaks as much.
Returning or perhaps arriving at what I had intend to say:
American music, in its best examples (there are plenty of wretched examples too)
should give you some sort of pride, as it contains multitudes of feeling and
captures a world that is unique and can be celebrated without irony or
apologetic doubling over. There have to be more modern examples, and examples from many genres- most notably jazz- even as I have
chosen some rock and roll archetypes here since that has been what I've had on lately. Another non-modern example would be the Grateful
Dead- never a band I adored, but clearly American and nothing else. Their only
influences are from roots and folk music of the USA. I listened to a 45:00 medley on
YouTube of “Estimated Prophet,” “St. Stephen,” “Eyes of the World” that was
performed at Winterland in San Francisco in 1977, and even though Donna what’s
her name is sort of out of tune and Bob Weir’s vocals sound occasionally
horrible, it made me glad to be home. It is ours and it is genuine, a bit
sloppy, maybe derivative, but real nonetheless. It has been said many ways but
the potpourri of American culture is what makes it dynamic, exciting, and
unique. It is what makes us paragons for ridicule and celebration in the world.
And we shouldn’t be too timid to allow ourselves to be proud, and even revel in
its riches:
Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.
-Walt Whitman, "America"
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