Aegian Sea by Aphrodites Child

AEGIAN SEA

I saw the souls I saw the martyrs I heard them crying I heard them shouting They were dressed in white they've been told to wait The sun was black the moon was red the stars were falling the earth has trembling And then a crowd impossible to number Dressed in white carrying palms

shouted amid the hotless sun the lightless moon the windless earth the colourless sky ... They'll no more suffer from hunger they'll no more suffer from thirst They'll no more suffer from hunger they'll no more suffer from thirst They'll no more suffer from hunger they'll no more suffer from thirst

Sea and Sand

i go back to places where i was happy. places of past loves and joy but once there in situ and without the people that made it whatever it is i thought it was at the time, the place seems a shell. an empty one.

i was deeply in love with a gal named Alison. we met thru mutuals when she came to visit from New York. ended up on a couple of annual trips with them to the northeastern seaboard and NYC and seeing Alison was a big part of it for me. one of those trips included a group going to Martha's Vineyard for a weekend after the tourist season. had a wonderful time. nothing happened between us, ever.




but in my mind i held this infatuation for some time after and went up East by myself the following year. after an awkward visit with Alison and our friends i went to the Vineyard by myself. with nowhere to stay i slept on the beach. however nostalgic or romantic, it just wasn't the same.


Sea and Sand by Peter Townsend

Here by the sea and sand
Nothing ever goes as planned,
I just couldn't face going home
It was just a drag on my own.
They finally threw me out
My mother got drunk on stout,
My dad couldn't stand on two feet,
As he lectured about morality.
Now I guess the families complete,
With me hanging round on the street
Or here on the beach.

The girl I love
Is a perfect dresser,
Wears every fashion
Gets it to the tee.
Heavens above,
I got to match her
She knows just how
She wants her man to be
Leave it to me.

My jacket's gonna be cut slim and checked
Maybe a touch of seersucker with an open neck
I ride a G S scooter with my hair cut neat
I wear my wartime coat in the wind and sleet.

I see her dancing
Across the ballroom
U V light making starshine
Of her smile.
I am the face,
She has to know me,
I'm dressed up better than anyone
Within a mile.

So how come the other tickets look much better?
Without a penny to spend they dress to the letter.
How come the girls come on oh so cool
Yet when you meet 'em, every one's a fool.

Come sleep on the beach
Keep within my reach
I just want to die with you near
I'm feeling so high with you here.
I'm wet and I'm cold
But thank God I ain't old
Why didn't I say what I mean?
I should have split home at fifteen
There's a story that the grass is so green,
What did I see?
Where have I been?

Nothing is planned, by the sea and the sand

anyone that is familiar with the '73 album Quadrophenia by The Who knows the story. a kid, too wrapped up in his past, facing the challenges of maturity. as a child of the late '60's/early '70's, letting go of the past is pretty challenging. why couldn't we be young forever?















it seems that with the exception of the Mod/Rocker riots in Brighton, and the Mod movement, the story line was pretty close to mine. lyrically and musically it was spot-on. a mixed up kid moving on from everything that made his youth exciting- a coming of age story that fit me like a second skin. Then in 1979 the movie was released and there was my youth splashed up on the screen. more accurately- blend Quadrophenia with Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous and that pretty well sums it up.

Almost Famous? that's a whole 'nuther post to be covered later.

there's a hole in the bottom of the sea.

i am not particularly strong, but i wake up everyday to work and play.

though not what i consider handsome, i can look at myself in the mirror each morning and not vomit, most times. maybe i'm just too close.

at times i am at peace with the world. don't know what brings it on but the hole in the pit of mt stomach is replaced with contentment and a knowing that everything will be alright. with nothing changing externally hope arrives with no apparent reason. here i go quoting Robert Fripp again but how apt an aphorism-

"In desperate times, a reasonable person might despair; but hope is unreasonable, and love is greater even than this."

this would explain much in my life.

horrible people run the country yet i have so much hope for it and us. in my last post i wrote of the concept of a soul mate for me, not yet but here's hoping. though not by one singular person, i do feel loved. there are hard times ahead. there will always be difficulties. i deal with them with the hope that things will be better. unreasonable? yes. do what's right and good comes.

that's all i have for now.

Weeping at beauty

There's cause to weep
at beauty
when something so perfectly
reflects the presence of God
like strong eyes
or silence
or knowing a glimpse of Truth

As there's cause to laughter
and cause for pain
each as valid as
weeping at beauty
but alas- tears of joy
evaporate before
hitting the floor.

More love.

Been working on my myspace page and the "middle bit" of Lauren Garbo began to play. My mind wandered back to the days when i wrote the song- days of innocence and exploration. The lyric is about waiting for my soul mate. I was convinced that everyone has a single "love of my life". Though at the time my freedom of spirit led me to going quickly from one girlfriend to another and occasionally beginning one before finishing with another. Guess i was a womaniser. Most likely just just young and stupid and selfish. Haven't found my soul mate yet. Perhaps i have, and tossed her aside for a prettier face. Looking back, there are at least 5 that fall into that category. Not to brag here but we're talking dozens of relationships from one night stands to those that lasted years. Why am i spilling all this now at the tender age of 50?

I don't know if i still feel that way about finding a soul mate. I want to believe it. For a long time i went in quite the opposite direction- that even if there is "one" person out there, it is of no consiquence. Should we meet up in this life, all the better but if not- it wasn't meant to be. But even that is living under the supposition that that person does indeed exist. As i write this i'm waffeling on that question- and believing most likely not.

Not long ago i thought i had indeed met her. I met "her" before. She had a different name then. Her first name was Mare, then Karen, then Alison, then Charlotte, then Pam, then on anon...

Since getting sober in 1988 my relationships have gotten fewer but more long-lasting. In the long stretches between I have become quite comfortable on my own. If i can't be with myself how can i expect someone to want to be with me? Besides- i have more time for music and work and more work and- waitaminute- if i have so much time for all that work why can't the time be shared with someone else? This is the crux- that someone has to want to... i can't make someone want to be with me.

Maybe one day someone will. Maybe not. La di da.

"... i know for sure you're out there
can't you feel my spirit bleed?
just to know that you exist is all i need."
lyrics for Laren Garbo by Dominic Schaeffer 1978

This pondering comes to you as a result of Hope. Robert Fripp has stated "there are times when reasonable people might despair. But hope is unreasonable, and love is greater than this..."

From Gore to Edwards to Biden...

this is my reply to a post on Democratic Underground asking-

tsegat01 (1000+ posts)

Mon Nov-26-07 06:52 PM Original message

Have you changed candidates and why?

Just curious. I've encountered a number of people who have switched candidates for various reasons. Some were disappointed in something their original choice had done or said, whereas others became more impressed with another candidate.

Gore was, and still is, the only person for the job. If he ran 3rd party I would drop my affiliation with the Democratic Party in a heartbeat. There are millions of us out here and Al knows it. He would split the party apart and would never do that. A pity, really. As much as a multi-party system is needed here, to do it now would be an automatic win for the GOP. So I'm left supporting Al Gore in all his works as "diplomat on the world stage"... and I DO support Gore in ALL his works and decisions- but DAMN IT, AL... WE NEED YOU!!! NOW!!!". Okay- three deep breaths and one foot in front of the other...

sigh... anyways-

Edwards looked good for a time but, honestly- I feel that he was speaking from sound bites and not from the heart. All candidates do the sound-bite thing to a certain degree and that's fine, but after a while it gets old to me and the more a candidate can get past it and go for the crux of the issues, the more secure I feel in making a choice about who to give my support. I have always been distrusting of the main-stream media telling me who the "front-runner" is- Hillary, Barrack and John Edwards. Up and down, back and forth, ahead then behind... the horse race with no substance. Ehh. Not to mention that I'm a hopeless romantic when it comes to the "come from behind underdog". My support for Howard Dean in 2004 was unshakable. Then I saw Joe Biden give the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner speech. WOW!

Until then (and even still to a degree) I saw Biden as a "go along to get along" guy. Like when Randi Rhodes asked him why he couldn't call GWB for what he is- a liar. Biden replied that that was the hardest thing for him to do. A totally political cover your ass response. The Bartcop graphic of Biden dancing with Leahy and Kerry in the pink tutu's comes to mind.









But that happened years ago. I'm a sucker for a second chance.

At the J-J Dinner Joe talked like a human being. He spoke of issues and he spoke of the deep trouble we as a nation are in. Pulling no punches, he spoke truth to power. He did not strike me as someone who could be bought. Sure, some of his solutions are not the ones I would personally choose, but he's actually speaking to important issues that the other three are not.

But hey- this is what the process is all about- wheat from chaff. When the party selects it's nominee, he or she will get my vote. Period. I'm a tree-stump Democrat.

"No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do!" Dorothy Day

Blues

i grew up on old Vanguard label blues records. todays equivalent of iTunes for American Music collections. Bukka White, Son House, John Hurt and others were faves. on one of the collections the liner notes were written by a guy named Leroy Jodie Pierson.

as a cook at The Broadway Oyster Bar, on Saturday nights there was a blues band that played on the stage/patio directly outside the kitchen door. i loved the raw, real country delta blues sound they had. "who are those guitar players?" "oh, that's Leroy." "but who's the other one?".... "oh, that's Leroy."

yup, Leroy Pierson, Russ Horneyer on bass and Geoff Sietz on drums.

i sat in with them a few times in a period of my life when playing music was a long distance love. drink and all that accompanies it were my companions in my basement apartment dwelling. guess you could say i was "living the blues".

but the blues is more than that. the blues helped me out of my depths. the blues let me play saxophone again. though i certainly sucked at the time, i knew enough to play a cliche or two. on 31, December 1987 i made the grandiose decision to quit drinking. no 30-day hospital stay, just straight to A.A. to try "90 meetings-in-90-days". on 15, April i bravely set foot into my old stomping grounds, ready to split if i got nervous, but anxious to play. i had phoned Russ earlier that evening at home and asked if he'd mind if i sat in- "Yeah that'd be great- just don't show up drunk!". Leroy spotted me from the stage and at the next song beckoned. "C'mon up, boy! Ladies and Gentlemen, i wanna bring up the dog bwah to play- this is a special day for him and we'd like to congratulate him on 90 days"... no one in the crowd had any idea what he was talking about but all the employees and band members did and it was thrilling. Leroy said "we're gonna play a tune by the great Gregory Isaacs called 'The Lonely Lover'... and i leaped into an opening line on the saxophone that i play to this day. an awesome gift from the blues. yeah sure- it's a reggae tune but what is reggae but the blues with a skanky beat?

i played with the Leroy Pierson Band through many incarnations. we played country blues, rock-a-billy, ska and reggae. Leroy was/is a wealth of knowledge and i learned so much about roots music from him. the old delta blues (as opposed to the more modern electric Memphis or Chicago style) was an early influence on my tastes in music.

some twelve years or so back our family was gathered for Christmas at my sisters in Oakland. i was sifting through her LP collection, finding many of the wonderful records i grew up with when i happened upon "The Great Blues Men". opening the double album i found the extensive liner notes were written by Leroy Jodie Pierson!

Please read this wonderful interview of Leroy Pierson by Micheal Kuelker

the Leroy Pierson Band Re-union at The Broadway Oyster Bar with (L-R) Russel Horneyer- bass, Dominic Schaeffer- sax, The Reverend Craig Spellmeyer- drums, Leroy Pierson- guitar and Ken MacSwan- guitar.

photo by Kathy Horneyer