Pale Blue Dot

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

Detroit, Detroit

Sweep up
I've been sweepin' up the tips I've made
I've been livin' on Gatorade
Plannin' my getaway
Detroit, Detroit got a hell of a hockey team
Got a left-handed way
Of makin' a man sign up on that automotive dream
Oh yeah, oh yeah

Fifty-One Years Ago Today

Who killed the Kennedy's?
When after all, it was you and me.
-Mick Jagger

Can't let today go by without my small, humble remembrance. It was a day everything changed and don't ask me to explain, because if you were not there, you will never understand. If you were, there is nothing else to say. That we have let the questions go on so long without answers, it is our bad. The killers walk among us.

Every year, without fail, the president dies all over again. For a few days every autumn, the entire media is overwhelmed by those haunting photos from Dallas. Those cruelly happy and innocent pictures of a young president smiling and waving at bystanders, the first lady clutching a bouquet of roses. With their soft, prelapsarian colors, they seem to hail from another universe—one that has been stolen from us.

Perhaps it is that feeling of loss that explains the lingering sense of grief over John F. Kennedy’s assassination year after year, when the anniversaries of other, equally shocking events—from Pearl Harbor to 9/11—are generally quieter affairs. But there is also something unfinished about Kennedy’s death, a lingering suspicion that no one has ever been able to banish.

The real JFK mystery, 50 years later: Why the infamous murder must be reinvestigated

Death of a visionary

Why are you here?

Why are you taking this course?

Why film?

The three questions asked by Professor Manupelli on the first day of class, "Introduction to Cinematography," University of Michigan, circa, 1970.

After an hour of toying with us, stripping us of all ego and pretense, we walked out the door at the end of class with his voice bellowing the one answer to all three questions, "Art, for art's sake!" I will never forget that class, those questions, his answer, nor the enlightening poignancy of spending a semester learning from this man, teacher and artist.

In an interview he did in 2009, he said this about teaching film at U of M:

"I came here in ’62. The curriculum then was drawing, painting, design — period,” Manupelli said. “I tried to get them to do sound as design. You don’t need to be a musician to make music. I didn’t get to teach film for nine years, and (I worked) without pay; I took the deal because I wanted to get at the students.”

Here I am, 44 years later, one of the students in that room and one who will never forget the meaning of,

Art for art's sake.

George Manupelli died in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, where he lived, on Sunday, Sept. 14 at age 82. He was a filmmaker, artist and professor at the University of Michigan School of Art and Design.

Death of a visionary

Closure

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest, they smiled like me and you
But now it's come to distances and both of us must try

Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

Sandy Denny (6 January 1947 – 21 April 1978)

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it's time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I have no fear of time

For who knows how my love grows?
Who knows where the time grows?

Dignity, Part III - Finale

Eric Anderson is another one of those brilliant singer-songwriters of the 60's. This decade remains the pinnacle of creative output of the American/British folk tradition. I could name them all, their great songs, and probably have in the 10 years of this blog, but this post is about Eric Anderson and in particular one of his songs that except for Dylan's body of work, sits right atop that entire sphere of artistic expression. My third and final post on Dignity.

The Softer Side Of Dignity

Dignity Lesson #1 - Don't listen to songs on the radio.

I first heard this song during my coming of age years of the 1960's in my home town of Detroit, Michigan. In those days, I would go to bed with a transistor radio next to my pillow, listening to new music out of Great Britain (aka The British Invasion) from WBZ in Boston, music that had not yet made it to the Motown-laden airwaves of Detroit. If ever a song would set a romantic path for the rest of my life, it was this one. What makes it such a remarkable piece of music is how that same sense of longing that I felt on listening to it for the first time on that anonymous night in a long forgotten 1960's Michigan, can be revisited, appreciated, and even felt, 47 years later on some soon to be forgotten summer's night in the Arizona desert, circa 2014.

Dignity

"I will never, ever give a woman my dignity. When a woman is taking advantage of my kindness, when she is taking me for granted, when she thinks that her mere presence is enough for me, I will walk away. Absolutely no woman can treat me in any other way than I believe I should be treated. No matter where I am in life, no matter whom I’m with, dignity will be a part of my spirit, until the very end."

It Doesn't Get Better Than This

Invisible

Gravity; Consciousness; Future/Past; Memories; Atoms; Light; Electricity; All But 5 Galaxies; Radio Waves; All We Don't Know; The Point Of This; The Point Of Anything.

We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.

W. H. Auden

On another birthday, come and gone

If You Want To Be Awe Inspired

To Be The Father Of Growing Daughters

“To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.”

― Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Homesick

With a holy host of others standing 'round me
Still I'm on the dark side of the moon
And it seems like it goes on like this forever
You must forgive me
If I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind

In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina
Can't you see the sunshine
Can't you just feel the moonshine
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind
Yes I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind

Paul Simon & Willie Nelson

Paul Simon & George Harrison

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening
- Jackson Browne

Don't Bogart That Joint, My Friend

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