Friend Zach sent this snapshot from Rio, and yorkrules got non-exclusive North American online rights to share it with you. Check out Zach’s blog for the latest on his globe-trotting, zig-zagging journey.
During some unrelated Interwebs research I came across this, yet another brilliant idea that wasn’t mine. Dammit!
(via realoregonreality.blogspot.com)
I took four years of German in high school and all it got me was a lousy girlfriend. After the final breakup a decade and a half ago, I didn’t have much use for the language. Then I came across the imagery of the Teutonic twosome Cenci Goepel and Jens Warnecke. Over the course of … (read more)
I first heard about Colin Woodward’s recently published book, The Republic of Pirates, on NPR. It must have been a good feature, because I immediately asked Julie My Love to buy me a copy. (Books are like drugs for me: I’m addicted to them, but I prefer to let others handle the finances.)
This is a non-fiction examination of the actual pirates of the Caribbean, drawn from first-hand accounts, contemporary court transcripts, and period publications. Woodward’s extensively footnoted and consistently entertaining writing, however, reveals that the Pirates of the Caribbean with whom we’re all familiar are a reasonable reflection of the reality.
This is evident early in the book, when Woodward describes one engagement in the legendary pirate career of Henry Avery.
Near the Indian coast, the pirates spotted a sail on the horizon. This turned out to be the Fath Mahmamadi, a ship larger than the Fancy, but also slower and armed with only six guns. The crew of the Fath Mahmamadi fired one pathetic three-gun salvo as the pirate ships gathered around them. The Fancy responded with a deafening twenty-three-gun broadside and a volley of musket fire. The Indian captain surrendered, the Fancy came alongside, and Avery’s crew poured onto their 350-ton prize. In the holds they found the proceeds of the Fath Mahmamadi’s trade in Mocha: £50,000 to £60,000 in gold and silver belonging to the ship’s owner, the merchant Abd-ul-Ghafur. It was an impressive haul, enough to purchase the Fancy fifty times over, but Avery wanted more. He placed the vessel under the control of a detachment of his men—a prize crew—and, together with his fellow captains, continued his pursuit of the great fleet.
Two days later, along the shores of eastern India, a lookout spotted another ship in the distance bound for the Indian port of Surat. The pirates soon caught up with what turned out to be the Ganj-i-sawai, a gigantic trading vessel that belonged to Grand Moghul Aurangzeb himself. She was far and away the largest ship operating out of Surat, with eighty guns, 400 muskets, and 800 able-bodied men aboard. Her captain, Muhammad Ibrahim, had reason to be confident of fending off the raiders, having more guns and more than twice as many men as the Fancy and the three American privateers combined. The stakes were high, however, for Ganj-i-sawai was heavily laden with passengers and treasure.
As soon as the Fancy came into range, Captain Ibrahim ordered a gun crew into action. They loaded their heavy weapon and rolled it out of its port. The gunner took aim, lit the fuse, and stood back with the rest of his team, awaiting the cannon’s recoil. Instead of a loud report and a burst of smoke, there came a horrifying flash. Owing to some internal defect, the heavy cannon exploded, sending shards in all directions. The gun crew was blown to bits. As Ibrahim was taking in the gruesome spectacle, the Fancy returned fire. One of her cannonballs struck the Ganj-i-sawai in the lower part of her mainmast, the most critical of locations. The mast partially collapsed, throwing sails and rigging into disarray and compounding the chaos aboard the ship. The loss of sail area meant the Ganj-i-sawai began to slow. Her pursuers closed in.
Swords drawn and muskets at the ready, over 100 pirates crouched behind the Fancy’s rails, waiting for the ships to come together. When they did, lines snapping, sails tearing, their wooden hulls moaning and creaking with the stress, Avery and company rushed over the side and onto the decks of the crippled vessel. [pp. 21-22]
Just like in the movies, Woodward takes his reader for a ride replete with action, romance, and humour.
The pirates, whom one witness said “pretended to be Robbin Hoods [sic] men,” also had a penchant for fancy dress and took the clothes of the wealthy passengers. They also seized a black slave and an Indian boy belonging to an Antiguan planter, but were prepared to let the remaining passengers and crew go. But one of Savage’s passengers, the nine- or ten-year-old child, John King, begged the pirates to take him with them. When his mother tried to stop him, King threatened her with violence and, according to Savage, “declared he would kill himself if he was restrained” from joining Bellamy’s crew. The pirates must have been amused by the little boy, dressed in silk stockings and fine leather shoes, for they took him aboard the Marianne. There were plenty of ten-year-old ship’s boys on naval and merchant ships, and now they had two of their own. To Mrs. King’s horror, her son took an oath of loyalty to the pirates, promising not to steal even a single piece of eight from the company, and sailed away with his new companions. [pp. 148-149]
All did not go so well for the young pirate, however, when, several months later the Whydah — the ship upon which the young master sailed — encountered a storm off Cape Cod.
As the huge seas tossed the ship closer and closer to the crashing surf, Sam Bellamy may well have remembered the wrecks of the Spanish treasure fleet, great hulls battered into kindling by violent, storm-driven surf. Bellamy knew where he was. In flashes of lightning, he could see the great cliffs of Eastham looming a hundred feet above the exploding waves. If they crashed here, there would be few survivors. The surf washed nearly to the feet of the cliffs, which rose precipitously to the tablelands, that windswept, sparsely inhabited plain separating the villagers of Eastham and Billingsgate from the sea. By midnight, he knew the Whydah’s half-ton anchors were the only hope of saving her.
The men struggled to follow the order as waves rolled over the deck. The helmsmen, their feet wide apart, spun the wheel, bringing the great ship’s bow face-to-face with the wind. The anchors splashed into the water and their heavy ropes began to play out. Everyone held their breath as the lines grew taught. There may have been a moment’s pause, as the Whydah briefly stopped drifting toward the foamy chaos behind them, but then they could feel the anchors dragging. The Whydah was doomed.
There was one last chance to save the crew, to do just as the men of the Mary Anne had done. They had to try to bring the vessel ashore gracefully, bow first, hopefully making it far enough through the violently tossing surf to give a swimmer some hope of getting ashore. Bellamy yelled out to the men to cut the anchor cables. As soon as the last strokes of their axes had fallen—the thick anchor ropes snapping free—Bellamy ordered the helmsmen to swing her all the way back around, to run face first into the beach. But the vessel didn’t turn. All watched in terror as the ship slipped backward, stern first, over thirty foot waves towards the white, misty chaos at the foot of the cliffs.
The Whydah ran aground with shocking force. The jolt likely shot any men in the rigging out into the deadly surf where they were alternately pounded against the sea bottom, then sucked back away from the beach by the undertow. Cannon broke free from their tackles and careened across the lower decks, crushing everyone in their path. One pirate was thrown across the deck so hard his shoulder bone became completely embedded in the handle of a pewter teapot. Little John King, the nine-year-old pirate volunteer, was crushed between decks, still wearing the silk stockings and expensive leather shoes his mother had dressed him in aboard the Bonetta months earlier. Within fifteen minutes, the violent motion of the surf brought the Whydah’s mainmast crashing down over the side. Waves broke over the decks and water poured into the bedlam of crashing cannon and barrels of cargo below decks. At dawn the Whydah’s hull broke apart, casting both the living and dead into the surf.
As the storm raged on through the morning hours, the ebbing tide left more and more bodies piled on the shore. Amidst the bloated, mangled corpses only two men stirred. One was John Julian, the Mosquito Indian who had served with Bellamy aboard his periaguas. The other was Thomas Davis, one of the carpenters forced from the St. Michael. Samuel Bellamy and some 160 other men—pirates and captives, whites, blacks, and Indians—had perished in the storm. [pp. 184-185]
If you enjoyed these select passages, you can purchase The Republic of Pirates on Amazon.
Tao Nyeu is one of only two artists featured here on yorkrules whom I have actually met (Brendan Lott being the other.) She was showing illustrations from her upcoming children’s book Wonder Bear
Artist: Weinland
Track: God Here I Come
This track is available on 
When I interview an artist, I always ask six questions. In every artist feature, like this one, I always include five of those. I don’t edit these interviews (the way someone writes — grammar, syntax, et al. — can reveal as much as what he’s written,) so that one dropped question is the only editorial control I allow to weed out the duds (and I ask plenty.)
My questions can miss their mark for two primary reasons. First, unlike the usual music and art interviews, they’re rarely about music or art, so they can catch the asked off-guard. Second, they can be so open-ended that they may appear unapproachable. Together, these qualities can make my queries just sound dumb, like the one I dropped from this feature: “Life-altering experience. What comes to mind?”
The first thing that comes to mind is the similarity between this question and the questions on my college application. Anyway, I’m on a health cleanse right now and I haven’t ate, drank, or anything else in almost 6 days so all I can think about is tacos. I can’t really think about anything complicated… tacos.
My dad used to say, “Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.” Looks like Weinland’s founding member, John Adam Weinland Shearer, just proved him wrong.
Who is John Adam Weinland Shearer?
A man for his place and time. I wouldn’t say hero, cause what’s a hero.
Who are Weinland?
A band to watch, proven to deserve your attention.
Why do you create?
We create because we’re drawn to create; like a mime to the ill at ease.
“God” begins both the song and its title. What is faith to you?
Two nights ago we played a bar in Salem, OR. When we were about to go on we noticed two ministers in full garb sitting at a table in the back. We played “All To Yourself” first and the crowd was receptive. Then we played (after announcing the title) “The Devil in Me”, and the general crowd was receptive. Then we announced our third song, “God Here I Come”. The two ministers rose from their table and exited the building. Faith demonstrates its significance in the lives of a lot of people (one way or another), and clearly the discussion, question, or embrace of it is frightening to many… including to those who dress in the uniform of experts.
Julie My Love and I are planning to leave L.A. this year. Vancouver (British Columbia), San Francisco, and Portland are top candidates for our new hometown. As a Portland native, would you recommend your city or not? Why?
I’m actually a Montana native, relocated to Portland in 1997. I recommend Portland to you if you enjoy a comfortable and unpretentious city. It is an amazing community, particularly for musicians and fans, as this is the place where the line between rock stars and rock fans is thin and at times not present. I think lots of people move here to be normal. Our last home show was a secret show (prior to tour) at a dive bar here in Portland; the guitar player for REM (Scott), the drummer for the Decemberists (John) and the bass player for the Thermals (don’t know him) were all in the audience drinking and having a good time. They enjoyed themselves without the pressure of their success… to my knowledge anyway. That’s a good city.
If I were to click on just one of your link page friends, whom would you recommend? Why?
Click on Norfolk and Western: They are the gateway drug to Portland indie-folk-chamber-pop-music galore.
My thanks to Weinland for sharing their art. Please visit weinlandmusic.com for more.
I love the Los Angeles Times. I hate L.A., but its newspaper is great.
I used to walk to the store and pay $1.62 for the Sunday edition. When the Times offered to deliver the paper to my door Thursday through Sunday for $1.50 a week, I became a subscriber (an exception proving the rule.) Now, thanks to my “self-employed” lifestyle, my weekend feels four days long, as I spend more mornings than not reading the most incredible things about the most fascinating people by some of the best reporters while lying on my couch.
Many blog-reading people get their news online. This should not negate the need for a newspaper, however, as the experiences are wholly unique.
Online news sites are fast and efficient — click<back, click<back and in two minutes it’s on to e-mail or Perez.
Reading the newspaper — the type that’s printed on newsprint — is a ritual, too, but in a pleasant sense. I retrieve mine from outside the front door as soon as I get up. I pull it out of its plastic protector and sort through the fresh contents. The front page, California, and the Calendar I keep (as well as Opinion on Sunday.) The rest goes into the recycling bin.
A small pot of green tea and a few slices of toast (Whole Foods’ freshly ground honey roasted peanut butter on one and organic Adriatic fig spread on the other) offer sustenance on the coffee table. I lie on the couch, with the rising sun glowing across the twice-folded paper I hold one-handed above me, and revel in our world. Now that’s what I call a ritual.
If you’ve never read the paper on a regular basis, or not since current events in second grade, pick one up this Sunday (a good one, like the L.A. Times or The New York Times.) Give yourself an hour and a latte, and indulge in an entertaining education.
In my self-assigned duties as L.A. Times advocate, I’ll intermittently (or until I receive my next cease & desist) feature select sections of the articles I enjoy. You can click on the title’s link to read the full story online, but it’s so much harder to hold this computer over your head when you’re sprawled upon your settee (and fig jam’s murder on a keyboard.)
New phase seen in Mexico’s drug war
May 18, 2008
Millan Gomez’s schedule was a closely guarded secret, known only to a few associates, officials said. But as he headed home accompanied by two bodyguards in an armored sport utility vehicle, four cartel hit men were waiting behind his front door.
The bodyguards dropped off Millan Gomez, who entered his home alone. Seconds later, they heard gunshots.
Though wounded by at least eight shots, Millan Gomez was able to grab one of the attackers, officials said.
“Who sent you?” he demanded. “Who sent you to kill me?” He died at a hospital, the third high-ranking federal police official killed in Mexico City in a week.
Young China quake victims fear loss of parents
May 18, 2008
The worst natural disaster to strike China in three decades shredded tens of thousands of families in Sichuan province in the blink of an eye. Many of those who died were children, killed when their schools collapsed. But many of the youngsters who survived now face the grim prospect of possibly living the rest of their lives as orphans.
On Saturday, a group composed of about 70 high school students who had lost contact with their parents was brought to a medical university here in the provincial capital. Each member was then paired with a college student who had volunteered to adopt him or her as a pal until the young survivors might reunite with their families.
“Don’t lose hope until you know for sure,” medical student Zhang Lei, 20, told Wang Chao, 16, who had yet to find his parents and 14-year-old sister.
As they ate lunch in a cafeteria packed with teens, a girl broke out in hysterical sobs that made everybody pause.
A crucial chapter for the storied Chelsea Hotel
May 18, 2008
“This hotel does not belong to America,” wrote playwright and onetime resident Arthur Miller. “There are no vacuum cleaners, no rules and shame.”
In these rooms, Leonard Cohen met Janis Joplin on an unmade bed. Bob Dylan stayed up for days, longing for his estranged wife. Both men memorialized the hotel in song. In one room, Thomas Wolfe wrote “You Can’t Go Home Again,” and in another Arthur C. Clarke penned “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The poet Dylan Thomas spent his last days at the hotel before a drinking binge finished him off in 1953. And 25 years later, the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious was charged with stabbing girlfriend Nancy Spungen to death in their room at the hotel.
George Smith and I have something in common. We both create desktops, those digital wallpapers that make many computer monitors passive expressions of personality. There is this difference: while mine regularly feature my cat, his are intricately layered electrical compositions of … (read more)
Artist: James McMurtry
Track: Cheney’s Toy
This track is available on
War breeds art. Goya’s The Third of May 1808 and Picasso’s Guernicaho are vivid examples from centuries past.
Just before I was born, it was the work of musicians, including Buffalo Springfield, Edwin Starr, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and John Lennon that left a lasting artistic reaction to the Vietnam War.
For today’s quagmire, we have our own playlist. I’ve added two more tracks to my iPod this month: Kalashnikov’s George Bush Bin Laden One Love One Family and Cheney’s Toy by James McMurtry.
Who is James McMurtry?
The next big thing.
Why do you create?
It’s in my job description.
You are a Texas native speaking out against a Texan president’s war. How do your Lone Star listeners react to your message?
When I first recorded We Can’t Make It Here, in 2004, I ran straight down to KGSR in Austin and the morning DJ spun it during drive time. I had hostile emails on my website before I even got home. I’ve played the song at every live show since. Early on I’d get a boo now and then, not anymore.
Your father is a novelist, your mother is an English professor, and you studied English at university. What does the addition of music allow you to express that words alone do not?
If you’re good at your craft, you can probably express anything through any medium. For me, music is more fun than words. Rarely will a pretty woman dance to an essay.
Cheney’s Toy is available for free on your MySpace page, and you encourage others to create user-generated content with it. Does online activism against the Iraq War have more or less impact on our nation’s political process than the real world protests against the Vietnam War during the late ’60s and early ’70s? Why?
Online activism doesn’t seem to be stopping this war. I don’t know that those “real world” protests had that much of an effect either. Vietnam didn’t stop because Abby Hoffman and his generation wanted it to, it stopped because Walter Cronkite and his generation finally wanted it to. This war will be much harder to end.
My thanks to James for sharing his art. Please visit jamesmcmurtry.com for more.
Artist: Willoughby
Track: Story
This track is available on
“Thank you for the current sound track to my life…” read one recent comment on Willoughby’s MySpace page. That fan and I seem to be whistling the same tune, because I thought Story was all about my life.
Why doesn’t Story
Ever get it together?
You gotta have a plan.He’s been waiting
Such a long, long time.
We hope he’s gonna
get it together.Just looking for a piece of mind.
We hope it’s gonna work out fine.
Know it’s gonna work out fine.
So I’m Story, and Willoughby is Gus Seyffert. This guy’s already gotten into my head, so now I want to take a look in his.
Who is Gus Seyffert/Willoughby?
my full name is William Gustavus Seyffert, but everyone just calls me Gus, or some version on Gus. Willoughby is me giving a shot at writing and recording some of my own music. i have a long list of friend’s that co-write, perform, record, and help give me advice to make good music.
Why do you create?
it’s the only thing i can do besides drive a cab or join the army .and, i enjoy it very much.
Airplanes are a recurrent theme in the visual identity of Willoughby. Why?
I was trying to think of images of what my music should sound like and I am a fan of old trains, cars and planes. There is a Twilight Zone episode called “A Stop At Willoughby” that tells the story of a man who dreams of this old time town “Willoughby” while on his daily commute on a train. I also thought about old spy movies and car chases. My grandfather was a pilot and a photographer so I have a lot of old pictures of planes he flew.
You studied music at California Institute of the Arts. How has a formal education in the arts influenced your creative voice?
I was studying jazz – upright bass – at cal arts. And though i really like the school, the music happening in the jazz and music school was pretty geeky. It was very mathy and modern. As a jazz musician from Kansas City i was trying to play more traditional swing, play simple melodies and groove hard. Like at most music schools, a lot of the students were trying to play as fast and in as many different time signatures as possible. Although i did learn alot of music theory, i have never been good at anything academic. However, when i became frustrated with the jazz there, the staff was very encouraging to have me experament with writing and playing different styles of music. I was able to study voice, guitar, and harmony which all helped me to start writing and singing my tunes (and let me say, it wasn’t pretty at the begining). I soon learned that the best music at cal art’s (in my opinion) was coming from the visual art program. i dropped out and found myself in the silverlake music scene soon after that.
If I were to click on just one of your MySpace friends, who would you suggest, and why?
It would be Jake Blanton. He and i met in 6th grade at an Arts Magnet “Kansas City Middle school of the arts”. He was the only other kid there who knew who the beatles were. we became BFF’s soon after. Jake was some kind of protege. He could play any instrument better than anyone we knew at the time. I’m very competitive and tried to do the same. We started our first band “Earth’s Core” and also played alot with Jake’s dad Jim Blanton in an acoustic trio playing bluegrass, oldies and some original songs with lots of harmonies. I felt we were on to somthing and could perhaps be the next Hanson, but Jake took to jazz and i soon followed. we both came full circle and he has a band “Slow Bro’s” and still plays jazz around Kansas City.
My thanks to Gus for sharing his art. Please visit myspace.com/willoughby for more.
My art reveals who I am, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are innumerable aspects of me, and only a few fight to the fore with need of expression. Rainbows, monkeys, and tragedy all have iconic significance in my life experience, but as yet only one has been the subject … (read more)
Artist: Steel Train
Track: I Feel Weird
This track is available on
[Interview with Steel Train's lead vocalist and songwriter, Jack Antonoff.]
Who are Steel Train?
Steel Train is a band in every sense the we think a band should be. We are best friends. We started this band to make music with each other. It felt great so we decided to make it our lives. Whenever people ask us who we are I always want to ask them what they think we are. I know thats incredibly cheesy, but its true. Our band is defined by the people who listen to us and projest their feelings on our music and us. Its always been more important to me to find out what a song means to me personally, not what its really about to the artist. I hope people who listen find that in our music more than thinking about what we thought of it or why it was written. Those are the bands that mean the most to me, and thats WHO we hope we are.
Why do you create?
Its just what i do. Its just as important to me as anything. Id really have no life if i didnt. The music i make completely defines me and I put everything into it. Ive never been able to be one of those song writters who only put certain things out there and has a whole personal life unkown to listerners. When im working on music its the only place in my life where i feel completely at home. Its the only time when i dont feel a little uncomftorble for some reason. I think everyone wakes up with a strange sick feeling inside them that they cant define. You get out of bed and try to shake it off by doing things you love. Its amazing to me how i feel when im making music. That feeling has never been present anywhere else. Even the greatest joys. The world is a very uncomftorble place and everyone needs a different place that they create to live in a little bit everyday. Otherwise you go crazy and hate everything. I do it cause i have to, like everyone else.
I Feel Weird alludes to 9/11 in its opening lines: “When i was eighteen everything was alive / Then the planes hit the towers / Then she died and he died.” How has life in the Age of Terrorism influenced you as an artist?
9/11 changed everything for me. There is a lot of talk about it in the record, and that has more to do with life after 9/11 then the event itself. For me, 9/11 was a major moment when everything changed in my life. Before then I had things pretty easy, nothing major had happened to me, I was in love ETC… I was in school in NYC on 9/11 and Scott and I watched the towers burn and fall the that day. I remember feeling bizzarre, like nothing would be the same. A few months later my sister died, and right after that my cousin was killed in Iraq, and on the midst of that I fell out of a long term relationship. My life now feels like its all aftermath. For me 9/11 was the begining of everything falling apart. To this day I have to work very hard to not feel terror, I believe Many people do. Although I link 9/11 to all those other things that happened to me, I think many people do see it the way I do. As the end of one time period and the begining of th next. Its a time period we have to be very strong to work through.
In an online interview with Absolute Punk, you summed up the previous phase of your life with this:
The concept of depression is so enraging. You spend all this time feeling awful, and then you spend even more time dwelling on the fact that you feel awful, and then you beat yourself up about it more and more to the point were you don’t even know if you are even depressed anymore. And when it’s all over and you look it in the face… You have nothing to show for it.
Can you give a similarly specific summary of the phase of life you’re currently in?
I’m in a much better place now than I was when writting the record. A major part of the lyrics are that frustration about having depression and becoming so angry that you are “someone who is depressed”. Kinda of like when your reality becomes something you once though was out of the question and you hate yourself for becoming ok with it. I think writting the record was the absolute low point. When I finished was the time that I really started to get things back together. I think its because the songs were the only things that came out of all the darkeness that had any value. After the record was done I was able to look at it and see that all those times amounted to something. That was the moment I let myself free. In still there now,, I feel very proud of the music and thankfull to be in a place where I can understand all of it.
Your cousin was killed in the Iraq War. What do you hope America’s foreign policy will be over the next 5 years?
I don’t know. I wish I knew. I wish I had an amazing Idea that I could talk about. But the truth is, when he was killed all the politics fell away for me. When I think about the war, I think about mark. That may sound selfish, but that’s just what its become for me. I pray that someone more understanding of it all will come along and prevent this from ever happening again. In too emotional about it to have an opinion of value. I’m the guy who lost a family member, which basically makes me the guys who thinks bush should be tortured to death. That argument doesnt bring people together always.
If you would like to share your creativity, or you’d like to suggest someone for Required Listening, please send an e-mail to share@yorkrules.com.
I amuse myself. When an artist catches my eye online, I’ll send him or her an e-mail asking for an interview. With my as-yet-undiagnosed short-term memory disease, I’ve often forgotten about the discovery when I receive an affirmative response. So it always entertains me to … (read more)
Chas, thank you for recommending Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem to me. Not only did I find a great quote for I Hate L.A., as you suggested I might, but I discovered a writer so talented that I am seriously considering abandoning the craft altogether (for I can’t imagine ever excelling at it as magnificently as her.)
Didion’s success is ascribable only in part to her abilities as a wordsmith. More significantly, her talent in transmuting thoughts into sentences is superb. Or, to paraphrase with less alliteration, “She says what we’re all thinking.” Any Southern Californian will appreciate that when reading the introduction to Los Angeles Notebook, one of the essays that is included in this collection.
There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to the flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior. [p. 217]
Slouching Towards Bethlehem’s eponymous essay documents life in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1967. Another of Didion’s apparent gifts is being in the right place at the right time, and her exploration of the Haight in ‘67 proves that true on both counts.
When I finally find Otto he says “I got something at my place that’ll blow your mind,” and when we get there I see a child on the living-room floor, wearing a reefer coat, reading a comic book. She keeps licking her lips in concentration and the only off thing about her is that she’s wearing white lipstick.
“Five years old,” Otto says. “On acid.”
The five-year-old’s name is Susan, and she tells me she is in High Kindergarten. She lives with her mother and some other people, just got over the measles, wants a bicycle for Christmas, and particularly likes Coca-Cola, ice cream, Marty in the Jefferson Airplane, Bob in the Grateful Dead, and the beach. She remembers going to the beach once a long time ago, and wishes she had taken a bucket. For a year now her mother has given her both acid and peyote. Susan describes it as getting stoned.
I start to ask if any of the other children in High Kindergarten get stoned, but I falter at the key words.
“She means do the other kids in your class turn on, get stoned,” says the friend of her mother’s who brought her to Otto’s.
“Only Sally and Anne,” Susan says.
“What about Lia?” her mother’s friend prompts.
“Lia,” Susan says, “is not in High Kindergarten.” [pp. 127-128]
I have admitted to an inherited misogyny before, so it may be of no surprise that of the nine books ready for reading next to my desk, none are written by women. Now a proudly-professed Didion disciple, am I perhaps less close-minded than I claim, or is her mind more masculine than feminine? If the following paragraph from On Self-Respect were surreptitiously slipped into an essay by Sam Shepard
People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs. [p. 145]
If you enjoyed these select passages, you can purchase Slouching Towards Bethlehem on Amazon.
Artist: The Hot Toddies
Track: Photosynthesis
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Who is Erin Skidmore? Who are The Hot Toddies?
Erin Skidmore (that’s me!) is one of the two singers and guitar players of The Hot Toddies. Heidi and I were in Mexico on a week long vacation in 2004 and we were having fun playing guitar and singing with some musician friends that we were hanging out with. After a few beers someone made the suggestion that we should start a band. I guess we took it to heart ’cause the same day we sat down and wrote “Ocean” and later that week we wrote “Sugar Daddy” – the first and last song on our record. At the time it was just two of us and an acoustic guitar, but we loved singing together so much that we wanted to find a drummer and make it a “real band”. The idea of having an all-girl crew sounded like fun and we convinced our friends Sylvia and Jessica to learn drums and keyboard, respectively. That was when The Hot Toddies popped out of the musical womb of Oakland, CA.
Why do you create?
We like to write songs while we’re really happy, which usually involves sunshine, booze, and an acoustic guitar. Heidi and I had both played in more traditionally serious bands prior to The Hot Toddies and knew from the beginning that this band was going to be FUN more than anything else. We write songs that make us laugh and make people dance and giggle and that’s exactly how we want it. I guess that when it comes down to it, we create because we have a really good time doing it. It’s definitely not for the fame and fortune! Another reason that I love The Hot Toddies, is that I love traveling and meeting new people. Being in a band is an awesome way to do that because you bring something to the situation, something to share with your new acquaintances. And since I’m on the road with my best friends, we always have great time. I would go all over the world with these girls, and maybe one day I will! Getting to travel is a side effect of the creative process I suppose, but it still keeps me wanting to go on.
Your band’s name is doubly apt. A Hot Toddy is an alcoholic cocktail (you girls like to drink,) and you’re hot, or as your MySpace commentors would say, “both WHOAH and AWWWWW”, ” dammmmm!”, and, “giggity giggity FOR SURE!” When you mix a rock group of four vivacious pretty girls with booze, what happens?
Okay, the short answer to this question is FUN. We have a lot of good times together. Compared to the sea of jaded cynicism and emo music that currently abounds, the four of us may seem silly and innocent — if so, I promise that it’s not for lack of depth, but actually concious enjoyment of the present. I’ve noticed alcohol often helps achieve that state of mind. Have you ever noticed that happy drunk people are like kids again? We are pretty goofy on the road and we make each other laugh a lot.
Looking forward, how will you define success? Failure?
I think that success is defined by the impact that a person, a band, or a company has in the world. Money is a nice sideline which you hope is a result of that impact, but it certainly shouldn’t be the end goal in any creative endeavor. In the case of the music business, in the past I think it’s been easier to measure success in relation to money because a band’s impact and $$ were at a fairly equal ratio. However, now we’re at an interesting juncture because of digital sharing methods… for example, I just discovered Bit Torrent downloads — I don’t know if I even used that term correctly, but basically the new free music sharing device. And it’s interesting because tons of people have downloaded our debut album “Smell the Mitten”! I think that it’s great that people are enjoying it, because the album’s impact on people is what really proves its worth. It’s nice to feel like something you worked on is being appreciated. Of course, people have to realize that by not supporting indie bands financially, it makes it hard for us to do things like tour just because we can’t afford it. But if our music affects someone in a good way, I’m happy, I think that is a fundamental success for The Hot Toddies.
What issue is most important to you today, and how should it be addressed?
I recently watched the film “An Inconvenient Truth” for the first time and I really hope that everyone who has not already will rent this film! Irregardless of political party lines, we need to start paying attention to how we take care of the Earth. I think that watching that film could really help to educate people about the issue of global warming. If it was up to me, it would be required viewing in schools and the US government would immediately pass legislation imposing some heavy restrictions, fines, and taxes on people who are heavy contributors to this problem. For example, why can’t we just make Hummers illegal? How are they even remotely justifiable as a vehicle? The Hot Toddies give 8 thumbs down to people who drive Hummers.
If you would like to share your creativity, or you’d like to suggest someone for Required Listening, please send an e-mail to share@yorkrules.com.
If you’ve read my previous interviews with artists and musicians, you may have noticed two common qualities of my questions: 1.) contrary to popular practice, I rarely ask about art or music, and 2.) I prefer “big,” open-ended questions that intend to plumb the depths of the creative soul … (read more)
My sister Sousa is over in Afghanistan, working on behalf of the U.S. Government to bring that country from the 7th Century into the 21st (and I’d guesstimate that they’re well into the late Middle Ages at this point.) She’s told me a little about life inside the perimeter, and it sounds … (read more)
Artist: Barton Carroll
Track: Certain Circles
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Who is Barton Carroll?
A songwriter and plumber from Seattle.
Why do you create?
For the same reason that most people create: to deny death.
I’ve been hounding my band manager friend to take me on tour for years, so far without luck. You’ve been out on the road before: what do you love about it, and what do you hate?
Playing shows is the best and worst part. When it goes well, you are reminded why you do it. When it doesn’t go well, you want to crawl in a hole and quit forever. And it doesn’t really matter how many people are there. I’ve had great fun playing to five people, and I’ve felt like a nuisance to an audience of 1,000 who could care less who the opener is, they just want to hear the headliner play their radio hit. I know it’s my ego talking, and I’ve been trying to get over it ever since I started playing as a teenager. But it can be really bleak out there, man.
you recorded your previous album in 2001, but it wasn’t until 2005 that a record company released it. How did that extended interval between creation and dissemination of your art effect you?
It was a strange sensation to get out in public and try to “sell” a record that [was] half a decade old. It was as if the songs were written by some other person. It was fun to rediscover some of them (and realize that they weren’t all as bad as I had thought.) But it was also really frustrating to have a new album that I was psyched on but couldn’t share.
If music wasn’t an option, what other art form might you use for creative expression, and what would you do with it?
I studied creative writing in college, and I’ve always been interested in the writing of any art form: music, literature, film, etc. I think that’s why I’m such a fan of lyrics, and I tend to enjoy films that are heavier on the dialogue rather than the action.
So I think I would like to write. But I’m not sure what I would “do” with it. Same as music, I guess… try to figure out what my problem is.
If you would like to share your creativity, or you’d like to suggest someone for Required Listening, please send an e-mail to share@yorkrules.com.
