Crazy Image

From the South, one wonders? Those look like army tents.The soldiers having a ball.

from Act One Scene Four

(Austin unloads the rifle. Sets it in a corner.)

Austin: So what have you got there?

(Henry’s wrapped treasure. Everyone sits, somewhat uneasily. Henry hands over the object.)

Austin: All right. What’s this now?

(He unwraps it. First the burlap. Then the towel. Sits back to take a look.)

Austin: Huh.
You know, I hate to disappoint you young man, but I have never known, in a single instance, of a Negro of any moral tone who was fond of the banjar. You won’t find such things up here.

Henry: Oh.

(Henry is crushed. Cole laughs again.)

Henry: Why?

Austin: Why?
Well that’s a rather complex question.

Henry: I’m all ears, Mister Steward. From what I’ve heard, it’s a beautiful instrument, and it’s the one true thing to come out of this meeting of peoples..

Austin: You call the institution of slavery a meeting of peoples?

Henry: Collision of peoples? Look I’m sorry sir. I come for knowledge, that’s all.

Austin: As far as I’m concerned, the only suitable music is that which has been made in praise of the Lord above.

Henry: That’s a hard position.

Austin: Which has arisen out of the necessity to instill temperance into all our fellows.

Cole: So you’re one of those temperence folks.

Austin: I am. In the old days, Mr. Cole, such parties that this little instrument would inspire in some woodland hovel proved a danger to my brethren as well as yours. The revellers would secure themselves against ambush by stringing a line across the path to their party. Any slave-owner who came looking – not to mention more than one curious innocent – found himself maimed or even decapitated by the act.

Cole: Serves ‘em right, I’d say, trying to run the lives of their fellow men, like they were cattle.

Austin: Well that’s a very sensitive remark there, Mr. Cole, but an eye for an eye does not for justice make.

Cole: I still say serves ‘em right.

Austin: Even the innocent who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Cole: I don’t imagine any innocent would come rushing fast enough to do themselves any harm.

Austin: Sometimes it would be the horses that were so maimed.

Cole: Oh, in that case. Well, that’s different.

Henry: And you want to blame all that hurt and pain on the little banjo there? You want to banish it utterly from the land because of some old southern party tricks?

(Austin sees the scope of Henry’s disappointment.)

Austin: Well... of course, the climate’s got a little to do with it too. Let me take a look here.
(He picks it up.)
You see?
It’s split.

Henry: What?

Austin: The skin. And the neck is cracked.

Henry: Really?

Austin: Weather up here isn’t conducive to the banjar. It’s an instrument born of the dry southern heat, the heat of the African continent and the State of Virginia.

Henry: So it’s split.

Austin: Yeah.

Henry: I never even got to learn how to play.

Austin: So tell me then: What are your names?

Henry: Our -?

Austin: What do you go by? In this act of yours?

Henry: Er.

(Henry and Cole exchange a look.)

Austin: You do have an act, don’t you? Or do you blacken up your faces with burnt cork for some other reason?

Henry: I go by Liddle Brudder or Long Tail Blue.

(Austin looks to Cole.)

Cole: Me? I’s John Crow.

Austin: John Crow?

Cole: Come listen all you galls and boys
I’s jist from Toronto,
I’m goin to sing a little song,
My name is John Crow.

Austin: But that’s not so original, is it?

Cole: What you mean?

Austin: Is there not a famous cork dancer named Jim Crow making the rounds through the United States of America? ‘cept, if I’m not mistaken, he’s from Tuckyhoe, not Toronto.

Cole: W’ll he’s not up here, is he?
...
Anyway, I never heard of him.
...
What business is it of yours anyhow?

Austin: Oh, I sometimes used to go out for the entertainments, back in the State of New York... Civilization...

(He’s thinking about his wife. He goes into a bit of a reverie. Macey enters. Has a brief conversation with him, out of the past.)

Macey: Austin. When are you going to take us to New York City for own of those high falutin shows?

Austin: They’re having a balloon launch in Rochester tomorrow afternoon Macey.

Macey: Now you know that’s not what I’m talking about–

Austin: And I hear they’re going to be unwrapping an Egyptian mummy right in front of the town hall on Saturday evening.

Macey: Austin. I want to dress up in my finest clothes, and I want to go into a theatre and sit down in a chair to watch a performance of a piece of music, or a comedy...

Austin: The circus?

Macey: No.

Austin: There’s a man named Barnum making the rounds with the oldest woman in the world. Claims to have been a nursemaid to George Washington himself.

Macey: A tent is not a theatre, Austin.

Austin: And then there’s that Jim Crow fellow. A play called Bone Squash or something of that nature.

Macey: Jim Crow? Well... I might be convinced.

(Henry is bringing Austin back to the present.)

Henry: Mister Steward?

Austin: You were saying? My apologies. I drifted off for a moment.

(Macey disappears.)

Henry: I was saying I thought it was – I mean I reckon you would have found those kinds of shows somewhat - er - offensive, or... uh, I thought you said the subject didn’t interest you.

Austin: Thomas Dartmouth Rice, who goes by the name Jim Crow, speaks in the public realm as if he believes he truly is a black man. And has stirred up all sort of trouble for himself as a result. He attracts as many coloured people to his city performances as white. I’ve heard tell he’s the most popular actor in America. It strains credibility to say you haven’t heard of him.

(Henry nudges Cole as if to say, ‘See?’ Austin notices.)

Cole: I -

Austin: I do not fully approve of his brand of low comedy, but the man is forever in my debt for publicly ridiculing the argument that the play by Shakespeare called Othello the Moor is not a genuine tragedy depicting the fall of a great man, oh no, God forbid, but rather a cautionary tale of lust between races - the latter opinion popularized by no less a personage than former President John Quincy Adams.

Henry: I thought John Adams was against slavery.

Austin: He is against slavery. He is also, it seems, against the notion of the so-called uppity Negro.Mister Rice may show a lapse of taste when he blacks up his face, but his heart is the heart of an emancipator, no less than William Wilberforce himself. Of course, the same cannot be said for his many somewhat crass and bigoted imitators.

Cole: I ain’t no imitator. I am myself alone.

Austin: Well, let’s have a look then.

Cole: I beg your pardon?

Austin: I would like to see your rendition, your interpretation of the Negro.

Cole: No thanks.

Austin: I abash you then.

Cole: Pf. No.

Austin: But isn’t this what you want?

Cole: What’s that.

Austin: To top our famous Mister Dartmouth Rice? To embody the genuine black man in a kind of transubstantiation? To get the edge on that upstart New Yorker Jim Crow, even as you all strive to beautify yourselves with our feathers?

Henry: Er.

(It’s clear this is exactly what Henry wants. Cole laughs.)

Cole: (re Henry) This one does. He does.
(Henry smacks him.)
Hey - You do!
He came all the way here into this god-forsaken wilderness because he thought he might absorb a little of the true, unadulterated l’esprit de Negro. And he dragged me along with him.

Austin: That true?

Henry: Er.

Austin: Show me.

Henry: Er.

Austin: Sing for your supper, and I’ll see if I can’t give you some assistance in recreating through your art the legitimate, genuine Negro.

Henry: Are you proposing... ?

Austin: An evening’s idle entertainment. I’m expecting a call somewhat late. I have to find some means to abbreviate the hours.

Henry: Er.

Austin: Don’t worry. You needn’t bother with your cork. That’s your surface, that’s your gloss. Give me a little number.

The Problem with the Long Neck

It throws my lower back out. The lumbar region. If I'm not careful. Especially in combination with motorcycle boots. That's what I get for trying to learn two new songs in a week. See, this is precisely why I'm not a professional musician. I don't want to suffer for my art.
By the way, Running Up That Hill is in C-minor, and there's a D-sharp drone that runs all the way through it. So naturally I'm playing it in double-C tuning with the 5th string tuned down to D-sharp. Trying to play melodically with as many chords as possible, to keep that driving sense of rhythm. There are some beautifully dissonant chords. It's going to be a favourite. But I'm going to have to go see a chiropractor first.

From the Celestial Monochord

Part of a promised series on banjos and repression. The rest yet to come.

A Pastoral Visit

Painted in 1881 by Richard Norris Brooke. From here and here, thanks to the anonymous commenter a few posts back. But wait a second. Where's Steve Martin? Didn't he invent the banjo? They sure don't look happy like Steve Martin. Banjo players play permanent bluegrass, with permanent grins glued to their faces, or at least that's what I heard.

News from Wilberforce

A letter from the Blyth Festival out on the West Coast of Ontario, near Lake Huron:

Mr Dix,

Just was thinking of you...realized I have never responded to Wilberforce, and imagined the anxious ether that surrounds such auspicious hand offs. I adore it. I would love to hear it read and think we should push Eric for a reading next summer, (if you want to). I'm not sure how to specifically articulate it, but I love the style of it, the cadence, both in terms of language and scene structure, it flows with a particular lilt that I think has the potential to be deliciously potent. I don't know if you're looking for specific feedback, or if Eric already has you on a regime of dramaturgy, but I just wanted to throw that out there.

Hope you guys are well,

Gil

PS The Perlman Clawhammer book is pretty fantastic, I started around Liberty and at first I was moving forward but I since have backed up some and picked up some excellent tunes, Soldier's Joy, Last Cold Whiskey, Bill Cheatum, June Apple, great fiddle tunes.

Next Up

Is it even possible to play Running Up That Hill on Clawhammer Banjo? I tried to find a big pot to step on with my foot to make a boing boing sound to replicate the simulated horns in Kate Bush's song, but the pot in my house that used to do it doesn't do it anymore. A change in the weather I guess...
Anyway, I'm working on it. C-minor? E-flat major? Who the hell knows...

ps I've just found a site that confirms there are no banjos in Kate's music.

Back in Banjo

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I've been away in actor-land and teacher-land all fall. There is much to say about teaching I suppose, but now is not the time. It has also been so long that I took a good look at the long neck that I found it bowed almost beyond belief. It took several days of truss-rod turning (clockwise!), plus half a Yukon Gold potato with the banjo in the closed case (yes I do that, and it doesn't smell or rot, it just dries up nicely until it's like a rock, only somewhat softer), plus a few short prayers to - um - Uncle Dave Macon? to make things right.

I've returned to the blogosphere though mostly to celebrate a new song I'm learning to play for a wedding on Saturday. It was written in 1966 by a feller name a Roger Miller. It's called Husbands and Wives and sometimes the only way you can celebrate someone's happiness is by singing a sad song. It's got a very sweet progression that's made me a somewhat better banjo player just by the effort to grasp it. There might be a few dissonant notes in my chord stylings, but I like dissonant notes. My banjo wouldn't be my banjo without them.

Here are the words:

Two broken hearts lonely, looking like houses
where nobody lives
Two people each having so much pride inside
neither side forgives

The angry words spoken in haste
such a waste of two lives,
It's my belief pride is the chief cause
in the decline in the number of husbands and wives

A woman and a man, a man and a woman some can,
and some can, and some can't.

And then it just repeats. You could go on and on with it forever. And believe me, I already have. Kat's sick of it.

Oh yeah, and the image above is from here. It's been so long I'd forgotten how to do that 'a href' stuff. Seems to me that bit of stitching, while nice, looks more like me than Roger Miller.

We're In The Movies (High Rez)

Here.
So high, I can't even see it. Don't have the proper software. QuickTime 7. But you can, hopefully.
And here, if you don't have the software either.
And for those who have just arrived, I'm referring back to this.

Sheet Music

Click on each of the sheets and you'll get a larger image that you can make larger still with yet another click. The music is perhaps unnecessarily complicated. I didn't know how to simplify it. (A lesson in how complexity can sometimes indicate a dearth of skill...)
p.s. I should mention that this sheet music was first published, hard as that may be to believe, in This Magazine.

'Nuther Armstrong

The other was recent. This one is a portrait of me, from about 20 years ago...

We're In the Movies (low rez)

Here it is. A gift from Kat on my birthday. The compression leaves something to be desired, but we'll fix it later. And here's the stand-alone. A slightly better quality one will be up soon.

We shot this last winter. Kat found a dancing school that gave us permission to shoot their class.

I know, I'm such an effing greaseball in it (I'm almost glad the compression makes the quality poor - it's as grainy as a cheap porn movie, or I suppose I should say as digitized), but it was only meant to be a demo for a more sophisticated, shampooed and made-up short film, starring Michelle Girouard and E. J. Scott, a bunch of kids and summer, and some underwater ballet dancers - I wasn't even going to be in it at all (except my banjo, my banjo was going to be in it), but the Bravo Fact people took one look at our CVs (playwright/documentary filmmaker) and didn't even look at the demo. They returned our application virtually unopened. I suppose I can't blame them. Anyway, if they had looked at the demo, they might have been horrified by my Charles Manson hair.

The bass player who magically appears is James Thomson.

The song 'We're in the Movies' was written by a character named Priya in my play/novel The Girls who saw Everything, (soon to be published by a small press near you, or rather, near me) who is a girl in Montreal, part of an exclusive book club, who imagines an audience following her wherever she goes, and uses them as a spur to write her songs. The video was going to be about that.

This one, the demo, is more about the images in the song itself. It's nice enough, except the greasy, growly vocalist. The filmmaker is clearly a master, and I have at least one friend who has expressed horror that I've taken advantage of her to put my little song on video. What can I say though? The little demo was a Valentine's Day present, and now the online version is a birthday present. In case you can't make them out, here are the words:

No matter what we do we will always be young
like a book where you're always going back to page one
say we're chased by a killer high tail it and hide
he sees us he runs in he's gone

then the future creeps by with its executive.
but we know that to work is the death of to live
till a man comes along from...
builds a marquee up above um...

sets up a booth sells tickets to our youth
cause we're young
and we're young
and we're young!

but for me though it's much different from that
no matter what I do I will always be old
I might swim and win medals (always be old)
know the rules of resistance (always be old)
tread on the boards send letters of love
still old in a raincoat old on a bicycle
Riding past the marquee...
(With a film from the past two thousand BC)

And I'm young I'm 19 when I look at that screen
But I'm old
and I'm old
though I'm young!

At the end of the film there's so much to discuss
As we try to figure out just what happened to us
Did we win? Stay together? Did we cry? Did we pray?
Did we find we worked hard by the end of the day
Were we good? were we ill? in the movie, did we kill?
A conviction, an appeal, was it fake, was it real
Or maybe we just got one heck of a deal,
And if you want more well there's always to-
morrow and tomorrow (if to-
morrow comes tomorrow then to-
morrow can be borrowed for to-
day, that's our way), cause..

No matter what we do we will always be young
like a book where you're always going back to page one
cause a man came along from...
built a marquee up above um...

set up a booth sold tickets to our youth
cause we're young
and we're young
and we're young!

Albert Polman

It's my birthday and I'd like to pay tribute to my greatest teacher, Albert Polman, who died Tuesday evening of a heart attack on the couch of his Brantford home. I saw him this summer, visited him on a whim, with Kat, who tells me she could see how special he was in that one brief visit. I'm so glad I saw him. I'm glad he never had to vacate his art-filled kingdom, with it's vast lawn covered with trees and statues of little animals and icons of St. Francis.

And as fellow student Laurie Armstrong (whose image is reproduced above) wrote in her message to me about it,

Cheers to my fiesty, eccentric and ultimately lovable Sir!

Go visit the people that reminds you of.

p.s. when I visited him, he told me that in 92, a couple of years before he retired from teaching, he got very depressed. He was depressed for ten years. Then one morning, about 3 years ago, he woke up and it was over. He was full of the brio and zorba of life again. So the last three years were full of projects and his only regret was his age-old one that there just weren't enough hours in the day.

Megaphone

I just got one. On ebay. I was going to illustrate this post with a photo (because why would I not?) but, for some reason, my browsers won't let me upload or link photos anymore. Am I being punished? Have I been abusing the system? Did somebody rat on me to the Blogger gods?

When I told the head of the acting program about my new purchase, she wrote back,

You WHAT?!!!! Do you really want one for yourself? Of course, you'll be loud but that's OK - I don't intend to be next door! Let someone else suffer!!!

Funny, hey? Now I have a megaphone. What better singing teaching tool can there be than a megaphone? Just ask Tom Waits.

Conspiracy

I keep trying to say thank you to Kanye West too but my browser won't let me...

Instruments

For next Tuesday's start, I have two harmonicas, three tin whistles, a wooden flute, two glockenspeils (of sorts), a drum, a broken lute, a mandolin that you can strum but not fret, a flute, a clarinet, my banjola, my banjo, (the glockenspeils are mine too), um, a recorder, a very crude fretless banjo made from a gas can (my personal favourite of the borroweds), a child's violin (my personal second-favourite of the borroweds), um, a small set of pan pipes. Several poetry books including the Oxford Book of Ballads and the collected works of E.E. Cummings, sorry, e.e. cummings, and a small selection of small poems from Arab Andalusia. As well as two or three books of poems by Jan Zwicky, Michael Ondaatje, Michael Redhill, and some others. Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Louis Riel, D'Arcy McGee, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva. Poem-books are musical instruments too. You know.
Still looking for an electric megaphone. Apparently there are ukuleles and a piano and some keyboards at the school.
So maybe it's going to be okay. Pretty funny though that that manolin is in such bad shape. When I first strung it you could play it below the fifth fret. Now you can't play it at all. Ah well. I'm going to have a mighty orchestra. And a childn't (what happened there? childn't?) child's violin is far less intimidating than an adult violin. Esp since the bow is broke, so I've just got the instrument itself. "Teaching is just improvising on the theme of truth." I wonder if that's still true with a broken mandolin.

Answers to Recent Banjo Banjar Mysteries

Just found out who the Girl Banjo photo was of. Though I can't seem to open her own web page. Ooops. Just did it. Can't find any banjo on the audio stream. But I do like the song The Golden Dream. The photo is from the back cover of a 2000 CD called Distillation apparently. Still doesn't explain how she got those fluevogs. I have the exact same pair, but mine are plain black with some white thread to subtley indicate the pattern. I wanted to get the colourful kind, like the ones she's got, but I got talked down by the person who accompanied me to the Fluevog store in Vancouver in September 1999. If you're out there and you know who you are, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

No. It was my own fault for being impressionable. The Malleable Personality. That was, as it turns out, the subject of my Trampoline Hall lecture. As opposed to Banjos and frogs.

(oops. I've been accused on my Banjos and frogs post of being a

It's interesting, considering the image that I stole was actually stolen by them first - since I have the original image of that frog playing that banjo in beautiful print from this book, for Hance Brothers and White throat lozenges - from the 19th Century. The print is a photo of a 3-dimensional window-display ad. Let me see if I can find the picture. Oh. here it is. My favourite pic of a frog and a banjo.)

But back to Fluevog, I'm wondering if the shoemaker himself is still asking people to write 500 word essays called 'How I saved Mister Fluevog from the clutches of the devil', or some such thing, in exchange for fluevogs for life. These shoes, such as what Erin McKeown and I have (mine more conservative and hers less) are called 'Angel shoes.' It's because they have the image of 19 angels on the sole of each shoe, if you can believe it. Treading on angels. Or at least treading with the moral support of angels. That's what M. Fluevog would have us do...

Banjo to the Pole

Hussey's banjo recitals were a feature in the swift raising of spirits: 'Had a go at the old Banjo. The Boss came in, he looked very old & grey - & pleased to hear the music & songs'. And although a glance in a mirror gives the usually optimistic Hussey pause for thought ('I do look a tramp!'), from only a few days after its gloomy beginning the journal manifests the extraordinary confidence and belief that characterised the expedition's survival: 'We're all very cheerful & contented'.

One of Shackleton's men on his expedition. I had no idea. His diary was up for auction I guess.



And more from this site:

James, in Shackleton's tent, "did some physics trying to recall some of my theory work," but soon tired of it. The occupants of Wild's tent had to shift their sleeping bags because the heat from their bodies was melting the snow, robbing them of this last bit of comfort offered by a dry place to sleep. Even Hussey's banjo lost its appeal for some. McNeish complained: "Hussey is at present tormenting [us] with his six known tunes on his banjo."

Another One More

And thus I have cleared the backlog in my image file for the 'jar.

One More

Monkey Banjo

Girl Banjo

Boy Banjo

The Painterly Arts

Patent Art

Teaching

I was recently expressing fret and worry to my old friend Jan Zwicky about the fact that I'm coming up to a semester of teaching for the first time ever, that I don't feel exactly qualified about what I'm going to teach and that I don't know how to organize the program. She wrote back:

"Teaching is just improvising on the theme of truth. You'll do great."

Gravity's Banjo

It has been suggested that I adapt Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as an opera, since Laurie Anderson cannot accept Pynchon's limitation that it be composed for solo banjo.

Since I wish it to be no secret that I am a lifelong fan of Ms. Anderson's oeuvre, I'd like to submit, in support of her desire to expand the musical palette, that we make a counterproposal to the effect that Gravity's Rainbow be composed for banjo and fiddle, a sibling match if there ever was one.

Speaking of sibling matches, those two look related, don't you think? Look at those eyes! Look at those noses! Look at all those beautiful shoulders! Thomas Pynchon! Have you got an illegitimate daughter? Is this the nature of your challenge? Sew a cambric shirt? Seed an acre between the salt water and the sea strand? Compose an opera for solo banjo? Reunite the daughter and the father? What are you afraid of, Mr. Pynchon? From whom are you hiding?

It's time to stop running, step out of the shadows and declare your paternity.

Banjo Banjar's New Look

For fall.
Don't forget to click the safe colour box. Otherwise the internets might explode into a miasma of nasty coloured microbots.

Ghost Waltz

The song Ghost Waltz by Jolie Holland features both an old-timey banjo and a saw. I'd like to link directly to the mp3, in the manner of your bona fide music blog, but Zoilus told me it's a bad thing to do. It eats up... um... it eats up something... Cyberspace? No, it can't eat up cyberspace. Bandwidth. Yeah, that's it. It eats up bandwidth.

A Pretty Small Concern

I was in Soundscapes the other day, listening to Jim & Jennie's CD, River's Roll On By, which features a beautiful, notable cover of Dock Boggs' Red Rocking Chair.

There's another song on there, a nice bit called Mt. St. Helens. Beside the listening station, the store had posted the Pitchfork review of the album. It's a nice review and maybe I'm quibbling, but where is the harm in writing about something that has both a literal and a metaphoric meaning? It's been bugging me for days.

He writes,

Jim and Jennie split their time between stark ballads and rollicking, banjo-fueled stompers, both played with aplomb, and there's rarely a misstep. When there is, it's usually subtle-- for instance, the lyrics to "Mt. St. Helens" feel like they ought to be metaphorical, but they instead are literally about living on Mt. St. Helens, a topic that feels more random than apropos.

Mister Pitchfork calls it a pretty small concern, but I have a somewhat larger concern about the way Mister Pitchfork evaluates the art that comes his way. What did they teach him in highschool, one wonders, and why hasn't he forgotten it yet?








Here's Dock Boggs and a cat. I don't know why the image has been copied three times, but I like it. One might find a mind-blowing two layers of meaning in such a triple-image, but I doubt it. Joe Tangari can feel safe here, on this blog of solo meanings. It's from this site.

Oh but now that reminds me of a piece of graffiti I saw the other day near the railroad tracks above Queen Street west of Dufferin. They're my favourite streets there but I can't think of what they're called. A pair of L-shaped streets. The graffito went something like this:

The numerology of the heart is binary: All ones and nothings.

Leading to the Question...

What is it with frogs and banjos?
It was going to be my subject of a Trampoline Hall Lecture way back, but at first it seemed the connection was just a no-brainer. It just was what it was...

Whatever the answer, it seems to lie in these parts here:

Apparently the red star indicated where the banjo frog can be found, at least in November 1999. I don't know what the green stars indicate.

More Art

From Dogwelder.com

Tarbooosh II

Enough of these pictures of self. Here's an image courtesy of Robert Greene. Used by permission. For once.

More!

Another banjo portrait.

And this is Kat. In Greece I think