The guilty pleasure of morbid curiosity

The Moai are a collection of statues that cover the beaches of Easter Island — big stone faces scattered across barren land.

Researchers posit that around 9000 B.C., Polynesian mariners discovered the
isolated island and settled it.

They made their homes under its palm trees. At first there were only a few dozen settlers. They thrived in an island paradise where the palm trees reached 60 feet into the air.

The settlers used wood from the giant trees to construct homes and boats. They successfully fished in the island’s waters, and society boomed.

To thank their gods for their prosperity they made large idols, the Moai. The largest statues weighed 86 tons and were 33 feet tall, according to Wikipedia.

They fashioned ropes and ramps from the palm trees that allowed them to handle the large offerings, which archeologists think were carved to resemble ancestors who were revered as gods.

The population was advanced for its time, and with each generation, its numbers grew. By the year 1500 B.C., there were 15,000 islanders. But the island couldn’t support a population that size. Resources were depleting, so they splintered into factions and fought for what was left.

Then the story got even spookier. From the clues left behind, historians surmise that even in the face of a catastrophe, the natives weren’t able to change their ways.

They raced to the end of their days, speeding their own extinction. The more resources dwindled, the more they fought.

Each tribe built more and more monoliths to stand guard over them as they fought. When they ran out of tree bark to make ramps to carry the statues, they let them stand in the quarries where they were carved.

According to Time magazine, there are 877 statues on the island today in various states of completion. But the islanders’ pleas to the heavens went unheard. Deforestation wreaked havoc on their soil. They ran out of wood to build fires and boats.

By the time the island was rediscovered by the Dutch in 1772, there were about 2,000 people left. They were cannibals living in caves with no memory of the great civilization responsible for the statues around them.

There are some fantastic theories on what happened to the people of Easter Island, like their technical skills were so advanced, they must have been an alien race who abandoned the island to go back to their home world.

But the exotic story of Easter Island doesn’t need sci-fi embellishments. The reality paints a heart-stopping picture that grabs our attention. And people learn best when emotion is involved.

Picturing the island’s exotic stone faces against the night sky sets our neurons on rapid fire, and the car crash of a once prosperous civilization is laid out so we can learn vicariously.

Morbid curiosity may seem like a guilty pleasure, but that’s how we learn what happens when we don’t play by the rules. Rubbernecking allows us to see the results when mistakes are made.

Poem: Natural Order

Natural Order
“Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean when is it all going to end?” – Tom Stoppard

Then self-reflection was invented and
eternity was the first spot on the map.
For many, never ending offered a life’s work.

To John, it meant never finding his socks
while neighbors added meaning to their days
and planned for infinite potluck dinners.

John seemed doomed to a lifetime of searching
and banging his head a lot
on the lower, darker corners of his cave.

What would it feel like to wander outside, face up to the sky
feet on grass, feet on sand, feet in water…?
Finding his socks would be such a singular event.
But the hiatus would be unnatural.

The machinery of the universe
is humming–

The night sky hints,
blueprints.

Poem: The Rise from Forever & a Day

The Rise from Forever & a Day

1 bone
1 scratch on the bone
1 cave
1 dead crow pointed to with the scratched end of the bone
1 token
1 taken away
North
A building with a roof that points up
Need
The distance covered by God in a year
A shining city

It was so
nice & clean.
We knew it wasn’t real.

So we walked up to it
and told it our life stories.

“It Could Be the First Day…” (Richie Havens interview)

As he watched over a sea of people while on stage at the Woodstock festival in 1969, Richie Havens got a sense of which way the wind was going to blow as the days moved forward.

He started singing the word “Freedom” over and over again realizing at this moment that his generation found its voice. Partly because of his talents as a singer and partly because of his ability to read the moment, Havens became a bellwether symbol for the festival. And over the years the festival became a cultural buoy for the baby-boomer generation.

“I was looking out over the people as I was strumming and this thought came to me. This was the freedom that my entire generation had been looking for,” said Havens.

All these years later and Havens is still a crowd pleaser at festivals who always tries to pay attention to his audiences and give them what they want.

Havens thinks of his performances as spiritual events where a bond is forged between himself and audience members. He never follows a set list. It is one of the ways Havens tries to keep things exciting.

He only plans the first song he is going to play in advance, and he says — of course — the last song is always “Freedom.” Everything in between is a chance for Havens to interact with his fans. The approach has worked over the years. Havens said he has never had trouble finding an audience, and he has never tired of what he does.

“It’s still like the first day to me,” said Havens.

In fact, Havens still fondly remembers the children’s songs he sang while growing up in Brooklyn in the 40s.

“Mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy,” Havens sang on the phone to me. “My mother said when I was 1-year-old there were three songs that I used to sing all of the time. That was one of them. The other one was ‘It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie.’ Between those ones was ‘Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.’

Havens joked that these songs foreshadowed his music career which has been full of accessible folksongs, artistic integrity, and there certainly were many protest songs in his bag over the years.

As a kid Havens sang hymns in churches and doo-wop on the streets. But it wasn’t until he ventured into Greenwich Village in the late 50s that he found himself.

Havens said the boys that he played stickball with on the street used to poke fun at him by calling him a beatnik. He realizes that they meant it in a pejorative sense but the name was a blessing in disguise when he realized that there were other beatniks in Manhattan.  Havens headed for the city and found artists of all kinds. There were painters, poets and musicians. Havens tried all of it. Jack Kerouac encouraged him to write poetry. But it was songwriter Fred Neil who got Havens to play guitar.

“I spent a lot of time in the coffee houses listening to all of these great singer-songwriters. They were singing songs that changed my life,” said Havens.

Every weekend Havens would go into the city and take in as much as possible. He said he was always singing along in the audience and then one event changed the course of his life.

“One day Freddy Neil came up to me and said ‘Hey Richie you have been singing along with me for a year now. Here’s a guitar. You take it home and home and learn the damn songs.’ So I did,” said Havens.

Havens couldn’t wait any longer to be part of a crowd that included Tom Paxton, Fred Neil and Peter, Paul and Mary. So he took the guitar home and figured out a way that he could learn to play it fast. By tuning the guitar a certain way he was able to play it almost immediately.

In a few days he learned some of the songs that he had been watching Neil perform. By the weekend he was up on stage and these soon-to-be-legendary artists were his peers.

However, Havens didn’t lose his humility just because he was on stage. The budding musician realized he had a lot to learn. Up to this point Havens said he typically wrote a song every day. But now he changed his tack.

“I am stopping right now,” Havens said. “I realized when I went over to Greenwich Village and heard these other songs… I wished I could write songs like this. I quit writing and stayed away from it until something came through me.”

That has been Havens’ method ever since. Listeners will find many cover songs on his albums, from Fleetwood Mac to Pink Floyd. He picks songs that mean a lot to him in hopes that they will have a similar effect on others.

“Whatever song I sing you can bet it is a song that has changed me personally,” said Havens.

When he is moved to create original material the results often sound personal and universal at the same time, as in his song “Prayer:” “…To all those who understand/Let not your words be heavy/There is he who understands/It is not easy/It is not easy to be a mother and a father.”

Havens said performing songs is his contribution to the world.

“I feel I am sharing what others have shared with me,” said Havens.

Interview with Joan Baez

The folk songs that Joan Baez sang in the early 60s made her a star. As much as she is known for these ballads, she is also known for political activism.

Baez has stayed true to the songs that made her a star, true to the ideals she nurtured and true to her voice, which still rolls with a beautiful vibrato to this day.

Gene Myers talked to Baez about the highs and lows of fame as she compared the political climate of the 60s to the political climate of today.

GM: There is a renewed interest in folk songs these days. Roger McGuinn has had success with his Web site, The Folk Den, where he shares traditional music with listeners through the Internet. And Dan Zanes has been very successful performing and recording folk songs for kids, not to mention the new crop of acoustic singer-songwriters. Any theories as to why that is?

JB: It may be the context in which we live and function. It has become more available. There has been a squash on art for so many years now. A lot of songs may have been written, but they didn’t have anywhere to be heard, except for small clubs, small record labels and alternative radio. I think now perhaps, the political atmosphere is going to create some extraordinary things.

GM: Even though you are an activist interested in affecting the world around you, this is the first time ever that you are endorsing a candidate. Why start with him?

JB: I never ever dreamed that I would. Only in the face of what I feel Obama does for people, the only reason not to come out on his behalf was because of my posture all these years, that I was supposed to not change it. But in this situation, I felt that it was really important to say what was in my heart.

GM: Would you elaborate on that?

JB: My feeling has always been that party politics is just so…what did my father call it…fraught with ghastliness (laughs). There is so much lying, cheating and stealing that I still don’t want to have anything to do with it. I believe that real social change has to come from the base, and not from the top. And I think that Obama reminds me of the base, which means people, the base of power…Certainly he will come closer than anybody than I have ever known in my lifetime. For me, it’s very reminiscent of the civil rights movement in the fact that it is not the rhetoric. It’s what happens with young people, what happens with the videos that have been created on his behalf. This is what he brings out of people, which we haven’t seen in decades!

GM: Growing up in the 80s, I was jealous of the 60s. The 80s seemed like a selfish, frivolous time whereas the 60s are usually portrayed as a time of altruism, experimentation and activism. Did it feel that way while you were in it?

JB: I didn’t know anything different. When I was that age, the phenomenon was going on. I had been politically active in the sense of (listening to) Pete Seeger from a very early age. For me, it just rolled on from my high school junior and senior years. It developed into the singing and the kind of politics that so many of us took part in. It was a time for dreams and a lot of those dreams actually came about. As much as civil rights is failing, it is also succeeding in a massive way.

GM: If the 80s were one end of the spectrum and the 60s were the other, where do you think we sit now?

JB: Due to the phenomenon of Obama, it could be shifted – very seriously – back in the direction of… (interrupts herself) I never want to say back to the 60s. Nothing is ever going to be that again. It’s going to be what we create now. I see the possibility now.

GM: Why is folk music the music that is tied to political change?

JB: I suppose that is because it came from the earth. It was written by folks. There was nothing contrived about it. It was about their daily lives. In the beginning it was protest music by poor people who didn’t have much else to do except talk about the conditions of their lives. It wasn’t necessarily poor people — the folk music I grew up with – and what’s going on now. It’s the people who need to be heard rather than the people who sing so they can get money.

GM: Do you think that there are current artists out there today doing this?

JB: I do, for instance, the album I am making with Steve Earle. Clearly his interest is not in making money. It is in making social change.

GM: Can you tell me a little about the album and what is going to be on it?

JB: The songs on it sound more like my beginnings than any album I have done in many years. It is completely “unplugged,” even has a standup bass. It’s four musicians, plus Steve [as producer and musician], in Nashville. Nashville is very laid back. I really flourish in that atmosphere. The songs on it have been chosen for their beauty and for their words, and a sense of what I was known for for many years. It’s a sound. It’s simplicity. You will hear them and know exactly what I am talking about. Steve wrote three of them.

GM: Why the return to your beginnings now?

JB: Probably because I am 50 years into it (laughs). It is a good time. Maybe it’s bookends.

GM: How has your relationship to music changed over the years?

JB: It’s changed in my never-ending search to find something fresh. It’s more important to me what remains constant. It’s what goes with my voice and what it creates for people beyond just music. That remains the same. As for the differences, I guess the phases that I went through as the years went on. Everybody who has ever been called a star reaches a point in his or her life when there is suddenly this great dip. You were something and, all of the sudden, you are still that something and the world is going on around you and not paying that much attention. (laughs) That is a crisis for everybody – and I mean everybody— Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Dylan…Those years are difficult. They were difficult for me. I finally, after many years, got past them. I was singing the whole time, but I had to come out on the other side knowing that I still create something that is unique in this world. It is valued and I want to stick as close to what I do best as I can.

GM: When did you feel you went into that dip?

JB: It’s all a haze now, but I am sure that, for me, it had to do with the end of the war in Vietnam. So much of my visibility had to do with political and social change and music. One thing I have to thank George Bush for is creating an atmosphere in which I became relevant again.

GM: It seems like a lot of your contemporaries hit a dip in the 80s. Not just in record sales, but also artistically. It seemed like James Taylor, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell…they got to the 80s and, all of the sudden, BAM!

JB: I don’t think you can create much music in a cave. We are creating music from what is around us, whether we know it or not, or whether we like it or not because that is what we have. I think when that became somewhat of a vacuum, it was hard to create anything relevant for anybody!  I also think that if Obama is given half a chance, it will give us a different context. Already songwriters, especially hip-hoppers, have responded because suddenly there is a relevance for them. There is something aside from the vacuum. I think it is going to create an explosion of creativity.

GM: Was it Reaganomics that created the vacuum?

JB: It started a little before that, but yes. (laughs) Reagan took us there. He put the stamp on the decades of greed.

GM: What can people who come to your current tour expect to see at the show?

JB: They can expect to see me and three musicians trying to communicate in a way which is as down to earth as possible, singing some very beautiful material. The voice is a different voice, but it is certainly in tact.

Sometimes, a second life can follow tragedy

Last week, a man walked into an assisted living center and shot his wife. I don’t want to assume any details or ascribe motives to people I didn’t know. But from what I’ve read, it seems Cornelius Donovan loved his wife Joan very much.

The Donovans lived at the end of a cul de sac in a quiet, suburban town. They were married for 60 years.

According to an article in The Record, next-door neighbor Lana Smyth said she used to see Cornelius taking Joan out for drives.

“He was very attentive to her, and I guess when [the illness] would get too much, he would take her out for a drive to calm her down,” Smyth said in the story.

Those who knew them said they were a devoted couple. Officials kept the details private. But here is what we know: It was her first day at the center. Her failing health made it impossible for the disabled husband to care for her any longer.

It seems many were surprised when Cornelius shot Joan and then turned the gun on himself. But there was one detail that stuck out in my mind. Cornelius sat with Joan for four hours before the horrible scenario was played out.

He didn’t walk in and start firing impulsively. The local police chief said he didn’t believe the man wanted to harm anyone else.

I know writing about a murder/suicide seems like an odd topic for a column called The Joy of Life. But as I finished reading the story, my mind was flooded with thoughts of loved ones.

“I love you” and “Thanks for being my best friend,” I texted my wife immediately.

I thought of her parents. I know she worries about her dad having a hard time coping if her mother happened to go first. These are dark, personal thoughts, I know. And I thank my family for allowing me to share them. I think I would be in the same boat as Sarah’s Dad if I were left without her.

After several conversations with friends and family, I get the impression that women might actually be better at dealing with these things. Is it because even in this day and age men are still tamping down their feelings, not having conversations like the ones this tragedy brought out of me?

Sarah’s family handles hardships with a morbid Western sense of humor leftover from the pioneer days. It seems to serve them well. Some aren’t as open when it comes to talking about loss. How much harder will that make it for them to handle loss when it comes?

Next I thought of my parents. They are a tightly knit unit. They work like a well-oiled machine, each one taking care of their non-overlapping respective duties to make sure that their household and relations with others are in good order.

My Grandma, who is now in her 90s, once told me that when Grandpa died of cancer in the 80s, she didn’t know how she would move on without him. She didn’t even think she’d be able to take care of herself since he handled so many of the day-to-day tasks, like paying bills.

But she did find a way. Not only did she carry on, she grew stronger. Eventually, a new path was forged. Grandma found herself walking down a path she never would have wanted, a path she could have never pictured herself on. But that path led to happiness nonetheless.

The Donovans’ deaths were the eighth such incident in New Jersey in the past three years, reports The Record. Many more have been reported nationally.

It seems the anxiety he felt over putting his wife in a home–as people generally say–was insurmountable for Cornelius. Reading a difficult story like this in the news can help us cut to the quick. In such situations, our daily busyness can’t serve as a distraction or defense mechanism.

For a moment we have no choice but to focus on what is really important. And that is why this story brought my own family to mind.

The grandma that I grew up knowing is an amazingly strong and self-reliant person. She went on to be the matriarch of the family. Seeing the strength she exerted to keep our large family in line inspired me.

It wasn’t a role she envisioned for herself while Grandpa was taking care of things, and yet it was a role that she grew to love.

Roger McGuinn, a 60s icon still on the vanguard

Roger McGuinn, the frontman of The Byrds, was a major influence on other recording artists, from The Beatles to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Fast forward 40 years and McGuinn is involved in a new revolution.

The buzz on the Internet these days is focused on social media. Once again, McGuinn is on the vanguard.

The man who pioneered folk-rock in the 1960s can now be found on Facebook. While on tour, he tweets photos and thoughts to his fans from his iPhone.

The Web savvy baby boomer has been using the Web to get free music to his fans for over a decade leaving many of his contemporaries in the dust, and he is enjoying every minute of it.

I spoke with McGuinn about his Web sites: The Folk Den and mcguinn.com, the music he loves and the music business to get a sense of what keeps him going.

On the music

Myers: Let’s start off talking about folk music. Why are you so passionate about it?

McGuinn: I grew up with it. It’s music that I have always loved and I noticed that about 11 years ago it was disappearing from the musical landscape. It had been replaced by singer-songwriters who were playing their own material.

Myers: Putting the singer-songwriter label on them took the focus away from finding traditional material…

McGuinn: Exactly. And there is a financial incentive to write more material. You get more publishing money.

Myers: What is it specifically about the older songs that still holds up?

McGuinn: They have wonderful melodies and they are great stories. They were originally used to convey the news from town to town, so they all have very meaty human interest stories in them.

Myers: How do you find the songs that you record?

McGuinn: Most of them are songs that I have been exposed to over the years.

On technology

Myers: You record the songs on your Folk Den site yourself?

McGuinn: I do. I record them on a computer. I have a Macintosh and I am using Pro Tools. I use a MacBook Pro with a Core 2 Duo processor. It’s the most powerful laptop you can get. It’s really a fast machine.

Myers: What about your Folk Den Web site? How did that come about?

McGuinn: Well, I started The Folk Den 11 years ago just to keep the old songs alive. I already had mcguinn.com and decided to make a section called The Folk Den. Every month I would upload a song with the lyrics and the chords, and a little story about the song. It’s done very well. People have been enjoying it.

Myers: Did you design the Web site yourself?

McGuinn: Initially, I did. But now it’s sponsored by the University of North Carolina. Some of the students there kicked in and helped me with the latest version of The Folk Den Web page. But I do my own site, I do all of the stuff on mcguinn.com… But the actual Folk Den page is a template that they created for me… I do write the pages myself from this point on.

Myers: You seem to be a fan of technology?

McGuinn: I have been a fan of technology ever since my grandfather took me to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. I loved technology at a very early age.

Myers: Your intention with The Folk Den was to get the folk songs out there?

McGuinn: Yes, to keep them alive!

Myers: Has it done what you wanted it to?

McGuinn: I would say so. In the last 11 years, since I have been doing it, the genre has become more popular – as evidenced by [Bruce] Springsteen doing a folk album…

On the business

Myers: Traditionally, record labels do a couple of things for artists. They record the songs and then they help them distribute them…

McGuinn: Right. Well, in the old days you absolutely needed a record company to be able to afford to record songs because the studios cost over a million dollars. The studio time was as much as $500 to $600 an hour. You could easily drop thousands of dollars a day recording.

Myers: Now, what is the budget like?

McGuinn: (Laughs.) You could buy all of the equipment for $4,000 to $5,000 and the studio time is free.

Myers: You were very successful with the old music business paradigm and now you are on the cutting edge of a new one. What are the advantages and disadvantages of both?

McGuinn: The publicity machine that record companies have is still better than whatever an independent artist can come up with. Fortunately, I have an established name, and I do things like help Sony Legacy with promoting Byrds’ products. I get a slingshot effect from that myself. I get publicity from that. But if you are just starting out as an artist and you don’t have any affiliation at all, YouTube, MySpace and CD Baby – there are quite a few Web sites that can be helpful. But you are never going to get the big push that you get from a record company. They pour millions of dollars into it.

Myers: Your understanding of technology puts you in a unique position. I was reading an interview with James Taylor the other day. He was saying that he was frustrated with his previous label and from now on he wasn’t going to sign record deals for more than one record at a time.

McGuinn: I think that is one record deal too many because these days, you really don’t need one. Downloading is cool. I’m in the camp of publicity is the new radio. There are ways of getting publicity and distribution without a record label. Amazon.com has been very good to me. I’ve put CDs there and they have done very well.

haiku

breath marks on the window

poems on the coffee table