I will try to write beauty.

I will abandon the depths of hate and rage;

Their ebony pits have tempted me long enough.

I will put down the mirror of death;

Its reflection will catch up to me in its own time.

I will turn away from the ugliness of my life;

It was made to be forgotten, not preserved.

 

I will try to write beauty.

I will reach to touch the wings of angels.

I will feel their feathers of air,

I will be swept in their wake,

I will bask in their wind,

I will ascend in their virtue.

I will strain to see the spectrum glittering vaguely in the crystal.

I will trace its patterns on my retinas;

I will dance them through my brain.

I will envelop myself in their glow;

I will shine with the light of a diadem.

 

I will try to write beauty.

I will embrace the little children,

Not damn their joy with my pathetic sorrow.

I will drink in the colors of the great painters;

I will bow to the portraits that my hand could never create;

I will absorb the love wrung from their pain.

I will lie prostrate before the Earth;

Her organic breath will run through my blood;

My mind will be lost to her depth,

And I will finally tire of listless words.

Let the brilliant, enlightened misfits become polite, complacent Americans,

For they have suffered enough.

Let truth prevail over certainty;

Let beauty triumph over order.

Let those with faith be disillusioned,

For their time is come.

Let spirit be seen for deception;

Let useless rhetoric be cast into the street.

Let the stone grow hot under our feet;

Let occipital lobes open to the rays of the Sun.

Let the Stars be seen as pinpoints,

For their balls of fire were exhausted long ago.

Let blood flow through the veins of the prophets;

Let glory be untainted.

Let wisdom bow to technology,

For no good ever came from words.

Let the poets be restored,

For we are tired of ugly words. 

Let the preachers turn to face Christ,

For He will hang behind their backsides no more.

Let music ring out in the boardroom;

Let unbound intuition replace blind reason.

Let the children be awakened,

For their slumber rolls them into waiting graves.

Let the teacher find his America,

For his time has come to rest.

Another Friday, another lecture with an ethnic music chaser.  Indiana University anthropologists this time, followed by a fine evening with a solid Irish band at Omaha's Dubliner public house.  Can you believe I talked them into playing The Pogues?  I can only hope that "If I Should Fall From Grace With God" makes it into their regular rotation.

 

Great talk.  Nicholas Toth and Kathy Schick on the stone-age evolution of tools and art - or, in some respect, tools AS art.  Probably the point of the night was how slow change was over time, at least until the ice age.  Case in point: Prof. Schick showed two European cave paintings, the first from 32,000 years ago, the other from 16,000 years ago, or "halfway to the Mona Lisa" as she put it.  Very little change, certainly no real progress.  The point came home later when I asked about stone age linguistics, admittedly a presumptive field.  Prof. Toth had some fine points about how left hemispheres increased over the millennia, implying language development.  That being said, given how repetitive tools and art were over so many thousands of years, he was reasonably sure they were saying the same things over and over.

 

In folklore, we work with motifs that reoccur all over the world, including my beloved vampires.  There are a lot of hypotheses about why these motifs are so widespread.  Some of these theories (and I do hesitate to use that word, as theories generally need evidence) are a little out there, and I’m not sure if there’s really a consensus; it’s something I’ve learned not to dwell on.  Reflecting on what Prof. Toth said, however, the origins get a little easier to see.  In a primitive society without the diversity of language we take for granted, the same things - and the same tales - are going to be repeated, possibly ad infinitum.  These narrow motifs are going to find themselves imbedded in their succeeding languages, and they’re going to develop in (sort of) predictable ways.  So you end up with a huge number of variations of a relatively small group of core themes, including the blessed E 251.  I’m not going to sit here and type that cavemen yammered on about vampires whilst flintknapping, but if the shoe fits.

 

I'm pretty sure they didn't sing The Pogues at Lascaux, though.

 

 

Hi, all!  The following is an abstract for a conference I'm trying to get into.  I'd really appreciate any feedback you might provide.  Thanks!

 

In recent years, scholars of Colonial East Africa have produced exciting work on rumor, particularly the oral history of putative blood-taking.  These rumors have allowed historians insight as to how those involved in the processes of colonialism construed specialized knowledge and changing material relations.  The best-known author on the subject, Luise White, has convincingly argued that stories of Mumiani - Kenyan firemen who kidnapped Africans so their blood could be drained to make medicine for the British - reflect an understanding of a colonial milieu including medicine, civil service, and callousness  toward Africans’ well-being that Kenyans would know all too well.  As White puts it, Mumiani stories and similar rumors reflected a fearsome world in which there really was much to fear.

This paper will attempt to historicize these rumors, examining how vampiric legends were part of larger anti-imperial and nationalist discourses.  Set against the concurrent work of the East African Union, Kikuyu Central Association, and Kenya African Union (each of which was successively banned by mistrustful British administrators), Mumiani rumors and others like them can be read as folk expressions of the desire for independence.  While Kenyans did read political newspapers like Muigwithania  and attend meetings and rallies that called for increased self-determination, they also told stories about vampiric Quislings who bled people in pits beneath fire stations so the British could have their life-giving elixirs.  As inspiring as the elevated rhetoric of leaders like Jomo Kenyatta and Tom Mboya may have been, their horrifying folkloric analogs are a more visceral precursor to the blood-soaked oaths and violent crusade against collaborators that characterized the Mau Mau insurgency of the 1950s.  Mumiani narratives did not merely elucidate the world of colonial Kenya; they were a dynamic part of the discourse that shaped it.

 

On the lighter side, here's where I'm at on Paige's bucket list:

 

( ) Gone on a blind date
(X) Skipped school
( ) Watched someone die
( ) Been to Canada - was very close, but had an expired driver's license and couldn't go :(
( ) Been to Mexico
(X) Been to Florida
( ) Been to Hawaii
(X) Been on a plane
( ) Been in a helicopter
(X) Been lost
(X) Gone to Washington, DC
(X) Swam in the ocean - if the Gulf of Mexico counts
(X) Cried yourself to sleep
(X) Played cops and robbers
(X) Recently colored with crayons
(X) Sang Karaoke
(X) Paid for a meal with coins only
(X) Been to the top of the St. Louis Arch
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't.
(X) Made prank phone calls
(X) Been down Bourbon Street in New Orleans - on my honeymoon, no less
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose & elsewhere
(x) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
( ) Danced in the rain-naked
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(X) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(X ) Watched the sunrise with someone
(X) Blown bubbles
( ) Gone ice-skating
(X) Gone to the movies
( ) Been deep sea fishing
( ) Driven across the United States
( ) Been in a hot air balloon
( ) Been sky diving
( ) Gone snowmobiling
( ) Lived in more than one country
() Lay down outside at night and admired the stars while listening to the crickets
( ) Seen a falling star and made a wish
( ) Enjoyed the beauty of Old Faithful Geyser
() Seen the Statue of Liberty
( ) Gone to the top of Seattle Space Needle
( ) Been on a cruise
(X) Cast a spell - when you date pagans, it's gonna happen
(X) Traveled by train
(X) Traveled by motorcycle(not far though!) - what she said
( ) Been horse back riding

(X) Ridden on a San Francisco CABLE CAR
( ) Been to Disneyland
( ) Been to Disney World
() Truly believe in the power of prayer
( ) Been in a rain forest - unless you count the indoor one in Omaha, which is indeed awesome
( ) Seen whales in the ocean
(X) Been to Niagara Falls
( ) Ridden on an elephant
( ) Swam with dolphins
( ) Been to the Olympics
( ) Walked on the Great Wall of China
( ) Saw and heard a glacier calf
( ) Been spinnaker flying
() Been water-skiing
( ) Been snow-skiing
() Been to Westminster Abbey
( ) Been to the Louvre
( ) Swam in the Mediterranean
( X ) Been to a Major League Baseball game
( ) Been to a National Football League game (CFL)
( ) Been to a cricket Test match

My old pastor used to speak a lot on the value of “intentional living”.  It’s one of those phrases with diverse and complex meanings.  To be honest, I didn’t catch nearly as much of his sermons as I’d like—zoning off in church is among my vices more often than not.  I’m ashamed to say that I recall the more recent times when my current pastor has said things that anger me better than the useful, meaningful things that have come from that pulpit.  Call it the perversity of my nature; my visceral reaction against being told that I should abandon my rationalism and embrace prayer is more memorable than the impressions of voices that I have now come to value.

“Living intentionally” is one of those weasely phrases that folks often apply when promoting an agenda.  It’s usually linked back to Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden Pond, and rightfully so.  Most “intentional communities” emphasize Thoreau’s anti-industrial leanings and strive toward self-sustainability, practicing eco-friendly small-scale agriculture reminiscent of Thoreau’s beanfield.  There’s not one thing wrong with that, but Emerson probably said it best at his irreverent eulogy for Thoreau: “at the end of years, it’s still only beans.”  Again, not that there’s anything wrong with beans, but intentional living offers more than that.

Another one of those weasely phrases is “finding your true self”.  Usually this is presented as though each of us were a Michelangelo freeing our inner Moses from the block of marble that is our daily lives and livelihood.  Again, there’s nothing wrong with that concept; many of us have that core of aptitudes and desires that need to be found within us and liberated.  We have our inner artists, we have our inner musicians, we have our inner athletes, we have these talents which need to be freed.  But that’s not me.  I am not part of that “we”.

My true self is one that I must build.  There is nothing within me that I need to free.  In my most honest times, I realize that my innermost desires tend toward the slothful and violent.  My natural soul is not a pretty one.  When I taught Hobbes’ Leviathan years ago in Western Civilization, I found myself identifying with that verbose writer’s sentiments that “base” desires – in the true sense of the word – were utterly destructive when allowed to reign unfettered.  It is natural to be greedy, acquisitive, and free: to depart from pretense of eloquence, rules suck.  If I were to let my true inner self run free, I pity the victims of my indulgence. 

For me, to live intentionally is not to find something within.  My goal would be to build the person I aspire to be, not revert to desire.  Last night, I attended a lecture by Nobel Economics laureate Paul Krugman.  The details of the talk aren’t my passion, though I did find his work valuable and utterly thought-provoking.  I'll probably find myself quoting him a good deal in the coming months - might even buy one of his books. 

After that lecture, I went down to one of my old college hangouts: the Zoo Bar.  One of the great ironies of the blues scene in the 1970s and 80s was that a core blues club in the American canon was in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska.  I had the pleasure of haunting its corners in the twilight of its prime years when I was an undergrad.  My nights there had me believing for a time that a properly-played 12-bar sequence was the key to the universe.  Travel costs have choked off some of the elite talent that used to come through, but last night the band was Bernard Allison’s group, just off a stand at Buddy Guy’s Legends in Chicago.  Good stuff—pretty much what a blues band should be, according to Stu.

Last night was a good night.  The point, though, is that there’s no earthly reason that every third weekend or so shouldn’t be like last night.  The person I want to be is a person who goes to great lectures that challenge his intellect.  We don’t have Nobel Prize-winners come through Lincoln/Omaha every fortnight, but we’re not quite the backwater those of you in London or on the American coasts might think us to be.  Likewise, I’ve let music – the blues in particular – get away from me, and that’s a loss.  The person I want to be has those skills, has that expression of creativity—and discipline.  It’s one thing for me to laze around blowing my harp; it’s quite another for me to get my chops back to the point where I feel confident stepping on stage again. 

Essentially (and I do overuse that word), I need to clean out my life and rebuild it.  Keep the aspects where I have done a good job lately (i.e., cultivating a responsive church community for myself, though without the slavish nature that I’ve allowed myself to be pulled into) and bring in the things that I desire.  I doubt I’ll get back into music performance, but I do want to engage my intellect more actively than I have been.  As many of you all know, I’ve been pecking away on a book longer than I’d care to admit.  That needs to be done, and then moved beyond.  I won’t get there netsurfing and watching pirated copies of Dexter.