WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Boomer Anthems: Dancing In the Street
byVanderleunonMay 29, 2018
Theme
Variations
Because? Because? Because?
Because it’s good to remember that there was a time when America’s black musicians actually contributed positive visions and emotions to music and the culture at large. And that time may come again.
Not related to this posting, but it appears the zman blog has been suspended.
I guess they are in a censorship frenzy now.
NoriMay 29, 2018, 3:42 PM
Imperator Rex/Vachel Lindsay as well today. ‘Ol Remus reported Vault-Co has shut down and had his archives wiped out.
The Circle of Filth is closing in on the truth-sayers.
As I grow yet older, I value Motown more. More even than the British invasion.
And just what did happen to our black brethren? When they were truly oppressed, they produced the Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Motown, and they covered the Standards (which we never hear anymore). Now they give us Rap is Crap. Was there a mutation? There are NO musical blacks anymore.
For that matter, aside from prancing around football fields and basketball courts, black contribute nothing to our culture.
madtntaxpayerMay 30, 2018, 7:06 AM
1964…dancing in the streets. 2018…shooting in the streets.
JackMay 30, 2018, 7:12 AM
I agree with Bob Sykes on black contributions to culture but I’ll extend it by adding, or any other thing in life. As far as their “music” goes, Noel Gallagher’s remarks on “jazz” are equally well applicable to anything beyond the Motown genres.
As a former resident of the Memphis area, and musician on Beale Street, I can tell you there are still quite a few black musicians in Memphis playing and singing the blues. Most of them spit on rap. In fact, on Facebook, one of them recently said “rap is dead; can someone please shoot it?”
DiogenesLampMay 30, 2018, 9:02 AM
Whatever was wrong with it yesterday, it seems to be working now. Yesterday it kept coming up with “this account has been suspended!”
AnonymousMay 30, 2018, 9:47 AM
“And just what did happen to our black brethren?”
===============
In the mid 60’s Lyndon Baines said, “I’ll have these nigga’s voting democrat for the next 1000 years.”, and then he signed into law a document that converted weak negro’s back into slaves. It’s been downhill ever since.
Lay down these words
Before your mind like rocks.
placed solid, by hands
In choice of place, set
Before the body of the mind
in space and time:
Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall
riprap of things:
Cobble of milky way.
straying planets,
These poems, people,
lost ponies with
Dragging saddles –
and rocky sure-foot trails.
The worlds like an endless
four-dimensional
Game of Go.
ants and pebbles
In the thin loam, each rock a word
a creek-washed stone
Granite: ingrained
with torment of fire and weight
Crystal and sediment linked hot
all change, in thoughts,
As well as things.
Gary Snyder
The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
from Preludes
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
ARTIST: CASEY KLAHN
Song of Myself
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
“From a student radical/hippie/leftist of the Free Speech Movement/Vietnam Day Commitee era and a full-on Democratic Liberal in the decades after, I think I’ve evolved a politics that is neither right nor left but is, in its elemental nature, draconian. In the last 20 years, I’ve taken apart my beliefs with a sledgehammer. Now I’ve got to put the surviving parts back together with tweezers and other ‘shabby equipment, always deteriorating’.”
Real World Address for Donations, Mash Notes and Hate Mail
Gerard Van der Leun
1692 MANGROVE AVE
APT 379
Chico, Ca 95926
![That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/welcometohell-150x150.jpg "That Was the Whopper Weekend That Was [Illustrated]")
Gerard Van der Leun
Lay down these words
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
The scientists are in terror
Comments on this entry are closed.
Cool song. Memories . . . kinda made me sad.
Not related to this posting, but it appears the zman blog has been suspended.
I guess they are in a censorship frenzy now.
Imperator Rex/Vachel Lindsay as well today. ‘Ol Remus reported Vault-Co has shut down and had his archives wiped out.
The Circle of Filth is closing in on the truth-sayers.
Are you sure about Z man? I was just there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G4jnaznUoQ
I was at zman just now. the straight url thezman.com issues a redirect to http://thezman.com/wordpress/
As I grow yet older, I value Motown more. More even than the British invasion.
And just what did happen to our black brethren? When they were truly oppressed, they produced the Blues, Rhythm and Blues, Gospel, Jazz, Motown, and they covered the Standards (which we never hear anymore). Now they give us Rap is Crap. Was there a mutation? There are NO musical blacks anymore.
For that matter, aside from prancing around football fields and basketball courts, black contribute nothing to our culture.
1964…dancing in the streets. 2018…shooting in the streets.
I agree with Bob Sykes on black contributions to culture but I’ll extend it by adding, or any other thing in life. As far as their “music” goes, Noel Gallagher’s remarks on “jazz” are equally well applicable to anything beyond the Motown genres.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soOJHt_2IPc
As a former resident of the Memphis area, and musician on Beale Street, I can tell you there are still quite a few black musicians in Memphis playing and singing the blues. Most of them spit on rap. In fact, on Facebook, one of them recently said “rap is dead; can someone please shoot it?”
Whatever was wrong with it yesterday, it seems to be working now. Yesterday it kept coming up with “this account has been suspended!”
“And just what did happen to our black brethren?”
===============
In the mid 60’s Lyndon Baines said, “I’ll have these nigga’s voting democrat for the next 1000 years.”, and then he signed into law a document that converted weak negro’s back into slaves. It’s been downhill ever since.