Riding with Min After Baez Sang Dylan

Joan Baez, Royce Hall, UCLA
November 2018

I know that's a bad photo of Joan, but I had to take it quickly, when she first came out or risk the wrath of my fellow concert goers. I like that her head is blurred out in light because that's what listening to her sing did to my soul. Blurred it out into light. I went into the concert so heavy-hearted, the fires, the air, the animals, the earth, the dead and charred land, the piles of dead children, again. It's not too much, it's just so, so awful. Joan sang and sang, though, in what was supposed to be her last Los Angeles appearance. She sang her own stuff and Bob Dylan and Tom Waits and John Prine and Woody Guthrie and Stephen Foster and Pete Seeger, and when she sang Zoe Mulford's The President Sang Amazing Grace, I cried. Because, really, it seems like another life these days, doesn't it? I'd never heard Baez in real life, had sort of fallen in love with my first real love to her music and was amazed that while her voice had deepened, it was still strong if not capable of hitting the super high notes of old. To tell you the truth, I don't know if I ever really appreciated those super high notes, anyway. When she sang Diamonds and Rust, I was twenty years old again and all moony over anyone who had a love affair with Bob Dylan and wove that love and anguish and romance into such words. Oh, boy.

I took a Lyft home, and when I got into the car, my driver, Min, acted super flustered as he'd had a time getting through the after-concert crowds in the street. I reassured him that it was no big deal and then he asked me how to get out of the campus and then he asked me what kind of concert I'd been to. It was Joan Baez, I said. And he asked, Who's she? And I said, She's been around for a long time, was famous in the sixties and seventies as a protest singer. Min asked me to find a song of hers to play for him in the car, and while I tried to pull one up, he asked, So what kind of things did she protest? And I said, She protested against the war and for immigrants and everything when she was young and now she's pretty much doing the same thing because of Trump. Min said, Why does she protest Trump? I know it's not good to talk about politics, but I love Trump! I think he's doing a good job! And I stopped looking for a YouTube video for Min to hear and said I can't stand Trump. Min asked why? and I said because he's a piece of shit. Bless Min's heart. We talked a bit more. Min is Korean and lives in Koreatown. I learned that he loves Trump because he's sticking it to the Chinese. Min conceded that the POSPOTUS does say controversial things but insisted his attitude toward China made him a great president. I said anyone who is so deeply racist and misogynistic, as well as ill-tempered could never get my respect. Min asked What sort of racist things has he said? I told him a few things and then said Honestly, Min, do you think he cares that you're Korean? He probably despises you for being Korean. Min clung to the anti-Chinese stuff and I sat pissed in the back seat because that light emanating from Joan Baez was leaking out of the car. I thought about jumping out at a light and then thought better of it. Min had on a large checked button-down shirt, just the kind I dislike, and I didn't know what to make of him, to tell you the truth. When I got home, I told Oliver and Carl about him. Carl rolled his eyes and Oliver said, Min sounds like a dumbass.








Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner's face is always well-hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall

Side of the Road

The Husband and I went to hear Lucinda Williams last night at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. Her craggy, strong voice sounded exactly the same as it had years before, and we were both stunned and thrilled when she opened with Side of the Road, a more obscure one that happens to be our favorite. We had just wondered what she might sing when she walkd out and began singing it. Afterward, The Husband said I could really just leave now.







You wait in the car on the side of the road
Lemme go and stand awhile, I wanna know you're there but I wanna be alone
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs
I just stood and looked out at the open space and a farmhouse out a ways
And I wondered about the people who lived in it
And I wondered if they were happy and content
Were there children and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don't go and try to find me
It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I won't come back and
stay beside you
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line
To a place where the wild things grow
To a place where I used to always go

La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
La la la la, la la la, la la la, la la la
If only for a minute or two
I wanna see what it feels like to be without you
I wanna know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind

David Sedaris

Last night, I had the pleasure of once again hearing David Sedaris at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus, an event that I've looked forward to every year for the past five years. I buy a series ticket to the Writer's Word (many of which I've posted about here), and the series culminates in a raucous finale by Sedaris.

When I was a kid I loved the joke:

What goes HA, HA PLOP?


I'll leave the answer at the bottom.

David Sedaris tells his hilarious stories, reads from his travel diaries and tells sometimes disgusting jokes while nearly two thousand people rock the house with laughter. I literally have to bend over in my seat sometimes to catch my breath. If you've never read his work, please do. Especially if you're like me -- beset with near-constant situational anxiety and a tendency to forget that the world is something other than tribulation! The best thing about Sedaris is his brilliant ability to weave a biting, bitter humor with sweetness -- after listening to him talk of his beloved parents, sisters and brother and partner Hugh, I always feel more tolerant toward my own family and all of our complexities -- there's something so powerful about recognizing human frailty and laughing at it --

Answer to riddle:


A man laughing his head off. It still makes me giggle. :)

Easter, or the day after, if Jesus came back as a regular man

Oliver exploring the ruins of the burnt mission church at San Juan Capistrano

I had nothing to write of Easter, of eggs, forgotten, still brown and white on their tempered shelf, of the slip out of church, the sidle down the two-year aisle, the children running to fill plastic eggs with candy and the pull away of ritual. I had nothing to write of Easter.

Last night I went to Royce Hall and heard the poets Billy Collins and Kay Ryan in conversation. They were witty and kind and funny and in love with words. 

Kay Ryan read this poem, and now I have something to write of Easter:

The Palm at the End of the Mind


After fulfilling everything
one two three he came back again
free, no more prophecy requiring
that he enter the city just this way,
no more set-up treacheries.
It was the day after Easter. He adored
the eggshell litter and the cellophane
caught in the grass. Each door he passed
swung with its own business, all the 
witnesses along his route of pain
again distracted by fear of loss
or hope of gain. It was wonderful
to be a man, bewildered by 
so many flowers, the rush
and ebb of hours, his own
ambiguous gestures--his 
whole heart exposed, then
taking cover.


--Kay Ryan

Another Great Night in Los Angeles

I've written before about the writer's word series that I indulge in every year. I buy one ticket -- it's my season ticket -- and I sit on the third row, right in the center and look right up into the eyes of some of my favorite writers and poets.

Tonight, after a frustrating day that I'll write about some other time, I was transformed by Maya Angelou. This ticket was originally for February, but the date was changed when Ms. Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Obama. When the curtain went up on the stage, she was revealed, dressed in a long black jersey dress and strands of gold chains. She stood for a moment as the sold-out crowd at Royce Hall at UCLA clapped and cheered wildly, and then as we quietened, she sat down and began to sing -- sing the words from one of her poems in a deep, rich, almost manly voice. She sang what I can only describe as the refrain of  Our Grandmothers: I shall not be moved. 

It was outrageous.

She lay, skin down in the moist dirt,
the canebrake rustling
with the whispers of leaves, and
loud longing of hounds and
the ransack of hunters crackling the near
branches.


She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward
freedom,
I shall not, I shall not be moved.


She sat in a wing chair on the stage the entire time, next to a little table that held a vase of pink snapdragons and white calla lilies, a beautiful wooden box with a shiny, gold clasp, and a hard-backed copy of one of her collections of poetry. She told many stories in her deep rich voice and recited many poems, some her own and some of those she loves best (Paul Dunbar, Nikki Giovanni, Mary Evans, Edna St. Vincent Millay, William Shakespeare).  She spoke about her own history, weaving her birth, her parents abandonment of her and her brother, her ten years living with her beloved grandmother, her rape as a young child and all that followed. Always, she came back and sang the refrain: I shall not, I shall not be moved.


It made me shiver.


She gathered her babies,
their tears slick as oil on black faces,
their young eyes canvassing mornings of madness.
Momma, is Master going to sell you
from us tomorrow?
Yes.
Unless you keep walking more
and talking less.
Yes.
Unless the keeper of our lives
releases me from all commandments.
Yes.
And your lives,
never mine to live,
will be executed upon the killing floor of
innocents.
Unless you match my heart and words,
saying with me,
I shall not be moved.


She spoke of how she had been "paid for," how we have all been "paid for," by our ancestors, by those who came before us, by those who have helped us. She advised us to acknowledge that payment and to know that since we'd been paid for, we must be worth it. She advised us, too, to pay for others.

It was extraordinary.


In Virginia tobacco fields,
leaning into the curve
of Steinway
pianos, along Arkansas roads,
in the red hills of Georgia,
into the palms of her chained hands, she
cried against calamity,
You have tried to destroy me
and though I perish daily,
I shall not be moved.


She connected all peoples, of all races and cultures. She claimed to be black and white and gay and straight and male and female and beautiful and plain and fat and thin, and she laughed while she told us these things and we all laughed back and then stopped to hear her sing I shall not be moved.

Her universe, often
summarized into one black body
falling finally from the tree to her feet,
made her cry each time into a new voice.
All my past hastens to defeat,
and strangers claim the glory of my love,
Iniquity has bound me to his bed.

yet, I must not be moved.

She spoke of the necessity of poetry, in particular -- to go to, for laughter and for tears, for sustenance. She told many stories about poetry pulling people from despair.  She pulled her presidential medal of freedom out of the pretty little box and showed it to us, not bragging but exclaiming. I shall not be moved.

She heard the names,
swirling ribbons in the wind of history:
nigger, nigger bitch, heifer,
mammy, property, creature, ape, baboon,
whore, hot tail, thing, it.
She said, But my description cannot
fit your tongue, for
I have a certain way of being in this world,

and I shall not, I shall not be moved.

She cracked a number of hilarious jokes that I can't recall right now. I do remember, though, that while reciting a list of immigrants and their respective countries, those who had come to the shores of America over the years from all over the world, she said something about the Buddhas and the Pests. That was funny. She linked us all.

No angel stretched protecting wings
above the heads of her children,
fluttering and urging the winds of reason
into the confusions of their lives.
They sprouted like young weeds,
but she could not shield their growth
from the grinding blades of ignorance, nor
shape them into symbolic topiaries.
She sent them away,
underground, overland, in coaches and
shoeless.

When you learn, teach.
When you get, give.
As for me,

I shall not be moved.

I laughed a lot and cried a little. I was moved, powerfully. I never felt like a "white woman" listening to a "black poet." I felt connected to those around me by our collective held breath.

She stood in midocean, seeking dry land.
She searched God's face.
Assured,
she placed her fire of service
on the altar, and though
clothed in the finery of faith,
when she appeared at the temple door,
no sign welcomed
Black Grandmother, Enter here.

Into the crashing sound,
into wickedness, she cried,
No one, no, nor no one million
ones dare deny me God, I go forth
along, and stand as ten thousand.

The Divine upon my right
impels me to pull forever
at the latch on Freedom's gate.

The Holy Spirit upon my left leads my
feet without ceasing into the camp of the
righteous and into the tents of the free.

These momma faces, lemon-yellow, plum-
purple,
honey-brown, have grimaced and twisted
down a pyramid for years.
She is Sheba the Sojourner,
Harriet and Zora,
Mary Bethune and Angela,
Annie to Zenobia.

She stands
before the abortion clinic,
confounded by the lack of choices.
In the Welfare line,
reduced to the pity of handouts.
Ordained in the pulpit, shielded
by the mysteries.
In the operating room,
husbanding life.
In the choir loft,
holding God in her throat.
On lonely street corners,
hawking her body.
In the classroom, loving the
children to understanding.

Centered on the world's stage,
she sings to her loves and beloveds,
to her foes and detractors:
However I am perceived and deceived,
however my ignorance and conceits,
lay aside your fears that I will be undone,

for I shall not be moved.

When it was over she stood up and we stood up and we all sang together

for I shall not be moved. For I shall not be moved.

Like a tree.

For I shall not be moved.

**The poem quoted is Our Grandmothers. When I stood up after this brilliant performance, I was alone (the trouble with single tickets) and felt a bit lonely that I had no one to share that moment with. Thank you, because now I think I have shared it -- with you!

I'm a tiny bit in love with Wallace Shawn

whom I saw and heard read last night at Royce Hall at UCLA. I indulge myself every year with a subscription to the Writers' Word series and because it's a single ticket, my "seats" are very fancy: in the third row, center. When I saw John Updike a few years ago, several months before he died, I could have literally jumped into his lap -- which I actually literally wanted to do. And tonight, I peered up and practically over the top of Wallace Shawn's perfectly round bald head. He was charming and clever and a bit self-deprecating and a bit stern and overall, a bit amorally moral. I think of myself, sometimes, as a bit amorally moral so I related to his views on what he describes as real world, fake world and dream world. Shawn describes the real world as a scary place -- mainly talking about America and the direction we're headed or have been headed (and he was particularly contemptuous of those in our country who advocate for and protect the extremely wealthy). He describes the fake world as the world we think we live in (a democracy) and the dream world as the world of art. When he talks, he doesn't sound judgmental as much as matter of fact and bemused, all at once. I wonder if it's called moral relativism -- a term I hear thrown around by the conservative right as something to be scorned. In any case, I absolutely agreed and felt a sort of release when I listened to him voice thoughts that those of us without a platform, who aren't filling giant concert halls to capacity are perhaps reticent to reveal. (Lately, the constant coverage of the Arizona shootings has made me feel uncomfortable and I think about all the killing of innocents and soldiers in the two wars we continue to fight and I wonder why we aren't in the streets pulling our hair out over this? lining the streets and weeping? )

Here's a passage from the first essay in his book titled The Quest for Superiority:

Beauty can be important in a person's life. And people beguiled by the beautiful are less dangerous to others than those obsessed by the thought of supremacy. If an afternoon of reading poetry has given me a feeling of profound well-being, I don't then need to go out into the street and seek satisfaction by strangling prostitutes. Art can be central in a person's life. If the art we create is beautiful enough, will people be so drawn to looking at it that they'll leave behind their quest for power? Beauty really is more enjoyable than power. A poem really is more enjoyable than an empire, because a poem doesn't hate you. The defense of privilege, the center of our lives for such a long time, is grim and exhausting. We're exhausted from holding on to things, exhausted from trying not to see those unobtrusive people we're kicking away, whose suffering is actually unbearable to us.

I bought a copy of Essays and read the one from which I took the quote above while waiting in a line that led to a table where Shawn sat smiling like a Cheshire Cat. I told him it was weird to stand in line for a signature but it must be weirder to actually sit and sign your name over and over. He looked up at me and smiled.  I'm a sucker for a signed book.