End of August and off to China. On the 27th we leave Washington DC for a three day stay in San Francisco, and then it is off to Shanghai, China, where we will live for two years. Where did the summer go? Not in this blog. It was quite pleasant and largely uneventful. Yesterday clouds rolled in overcast, carried by a cool wind that had leaves falling from the trees. It was a portent, autumn comes. Dad was here for five days, leaving yesterday in the wind and rain. I didn't tell him that he was my hero. Leif, my twin is here. We'll be together for two days still, as he's on the same flight to San Fran. Tor will meet us in San Fran for about a day. Shin and Solveig are asleep in bed because it is 6:30 in the morning. I could not sleep. Maybe the weight of the move to China has finally found me.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Heroes
Beowulf. Arthur. Robin Hood. Bilbo, Thorin and The Fellowship of the Ring. The Companions of the Lance. Heroes of legend, fantasy, and D&D. As a child growing up, are we not asked by our teachers and elders; "Who is your hero?" Although I found a place for myself in reading legends from England and the North of Europe, in Tolkien, and in playing Dungeons and Dragons, my hero did not come from here. Nor did it come from comic book heroes (I did not read comics anyhow) athletes, presidents, great thinkers, spiritual leaders, etc. As a youth I really didn't have an answer to the hero question.
Now, looking back, it is clear to see that as a youth my hero was my Dad. I did not worship the ground that he stood on. Mostly I did not enjoy his company and I often found him over serious. But here is where it dawned on me. I recall a fierce argument with Casey Dickman, my best friend in Alpine, Texas, defending my Dad for not going to Vietnam. Casey said his dad didn't go because the military wouldn't take him for health reasons, but he believed in serving his country and wasn't a coward. Okay, but my Dad believed in peace and was brave enough to go to jail for his belief if it would have come to it. In the end my Dad had a teaching deferment from the draft, so it never came to deciding on jail or shipping out to the Vietnam War. At age 10 or 11, Casey and I did not understand the reasons behind war, but we could throw about the stock phrases and arguments like pros. Anyhow, that must have been the first time I thought about my Dad as someone worthy of defending. How to approach the subject of Dad as my hero? It's so easy to blandly list his traits of awesomeness and achievements. It's just as easy and more fun to list his flaws and very strange character traits. And then there is this. Although I can now see my Dad was my hero, I didn't love him as I loved my Mom. My Mom and I had comfortable. In her presence I mostly felt normal and at ease with life. She was my rock. Dad was my hero.
Was it middle school or high school that we first studied the Renaissance?
That's when I decided (I want to write realized) that my Dad was a true Renaissance Man. A Leonardo Daviche, a Michael Angelo.
From birth and for all my years of schooling, up through college at UGA, my Dad was an artist and an art teacher. He started teaching junior high school in Boulder, Colorado. Then there was the private boarding school called Colorado Rocky Mountain School, where Mom was also a teacher, counselor and dorm leader. This opened their married life together. Next came Alaska. Dad first taught junior high in Sitka, where Tor was born, then high school in Homer, where Leif and I were born. From there it was onto higher education. He taught at Blackhills State College in Spearfish, South Dakota, was the art department chair at Sol Ross University in Alpine, Texas, and then went back to complete teaching at Valdosta State University, in Valdosta, Georgia. In between there were teaching stints in Australia and England as a Fulbright Scholar. So, obviously my Dad was a teacher and an artist. If that is all I saw him as, I don't think I could think of him as my hero. Yet after he retired, my Dad changed. The luster of the academic, the leader, the organizer of artists and creative types was done. His drive and the object of all that serious attention transferred from the higher calling of education to the more self absorbed pursuits of building model railroads, perfecting ski turns, and the like.
But I am straying from my purpose. Before retirement, I saw my Dad as the true Renaissance Man. Simply as an an artists, he was an accomplished potter, painter, sculptor, jewelry maker and so on. But then he also designed and built houses. He was a bit of a musician, playing drums or anything with rhythm, as well as singing in choruses. He was a mechanic and could fix anything in a house, was handy with a car, and a master with bicycles. He was a bit of a socialite and dominated gatherings and parties with his stories of adventure. Dad was an athlete. He was a true rock climber and mountaineer, and helped pioneer the sport of kayaking. He was an early spelunker, explorer of caverns. And in nature, whether on a mountain, drifting down a river, or walking through the desert, he was a philosopher. Finally, Dad, was a free thinker and an individualist who seemed to have had no fear of what other people thought of him. This could be very embarrassing to a teenager, but even as I blushed or hid behind my hands, I was still proud of him. And when Casey called my Dad a coward, it didn't bother me at all. I already knew firm as the Sun rises that he was not. He had seen friends die on mountains, in caves, and in white water. My Dad had hung from the end of a rope on the Matterhorn in a blizzard, and he was bold enough to wear red socks, sandals, short shorts, and a clay covered apron to business meetings that were strictly jacket and tie affairs.
Now, looking back, it is clear to see that as a youth my hero was my Dad. I did not worship the ground that he stood on. Mostly I did not enjoy his company and I often found him over serious. But here is where it dawned on me. I recall a fierce argument with Casey Dickman, my best friend in Alpine, Texas, defending my Dad for not going to Vietnam. Casey said his dad didn't go because the military wouldn't take him for health reasons, but he believed in serving his country and wasn't a coward. Okay, but my Dad believed in peace and was brave enough to go to jail for his belief if it would have come to it. In the end my Dad had a teaching deferment from the draft, so it never came to deciding on jail or shipping out to the Vietnam War. At age 10 or 11, Casey and I did not understand the reasons behind war, but we could throw about the stock phrases and arguments like pros. Anyhow, that must have been the first time I thought about my Dad as someone worthy of defending. How to approach the subject of Dad as my hero? It's so easy to blandly list his traits of awesomeness and achievements. It's just as easy and more fun to list his flaws and very strange character traits. And then there is this. Although I can now see my Dad was my hero, I didn't love him as I loved my Mom. My Mom and I had comfortable. In her presence I mostly felt normal and at ease with life. She was my rock. Dad was my hero.
Was it middle school or high school that we first studied the Renaissance?
That's when I decided (I want to write realized) that my Dad was a true Renaissance Man. A Leonardo Daviche, a Michael Angelo.
From birth and for all my years of schooling, up through college at UGA, my Dad was an artist and an art teacher. He started teaching junior high school in Boulder, Colorado. Then there was the private boarding school called Colorado Rocky Mountain School, where Mom was also a teacher, counselor and dorm leader. This opened their married life together. Next came Alaska. Dad first taught junior high in Sitka, where Tor was born, then high school in Homer, where Leif and I were born. From there it was onto higher education. He taught at Blackhills State College in Spearfish, South Dakota, was the art department chair at Sol Ross University in Alpine, Texas, and then went back to complete teaching at Valdosta State University, in Valdosta, Georgia. In between there were teaching stints in Australia and England as a Fulbright Scholar. So, obviously my Dad was a teacher and an artist. If that is all I saw him as, I don't think I could think of him as my hero. Yet after he retired, my Dad changed. The luster of the academic, the leader, the organizer of artists and creative types was done. His drive and the object of all that serious attention transferred from the higher calling of education to the more self absorbed pursuits of building model railroads, perfecting ski turns, and the like.
But I am straying from my purpose. Before retirement, I saw my Dad as the true Renaissance Man. Simply as an an artists, he was an accomplished potter, painter, sculptor, jewelry maker and so on. But then he also designed and built houses. He was a bit of a musician, playing drums or anything with rhythm, as well as singing in choruses. He was a mechanic and could fix anything in a house, was handy with a car, and a master with bicycles. He was a bit of a socialite and dominated gatherings and parties with his stories of adventure. Dad was an athlete. He was a true rock climber and mountaineer, and helped pioneer the sport of kayaking. He was an early spelunker, explorer of caverns. And in nature, whether on a mountain, drifting down a river, or walking through the desert, he was a philosopher. Finally, Dad, was a free thinker and an individualist who seemed to have had no fear of what other people thought of him. This could be very embarrassing to a teenager, but even as I blushed or hid behind my hands, I was still proud of him. And when Casey called my Dad a coward, it didn't bother me at all. I already knew firm as the Sun rises that he was not. He had seen friends die on mountains, in caves, and in white water. My Dad had hung from the end of a rope on the Matterhorn in a blizzard, and he was bold enough to wear red socks, sandals, short shorts, and a clay covered apron to business meetings that were strictly jacket and tie affairs.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
The musical life, or lack there of
Here's the scoop on a pair of albums that I enjoyed listening to as a youngster all the way through graduating from the University of Georgia in 1999. These were not my albums, but rather my Dad's. And technically one was just a tape recording of someone else's album, but the effect was still the same. For a kid my age and of my generation, listening to this music was a little odd. But I'll get back to this in a moment.
The albums are, Chuck Mangione's 1977 "Feels So Good" and Ry Cooder's 1986 soundtrack "Crossroads". "Feels So Good" is jazz, but with a lot of groove and disco added in. The title track went to the top of the charts back in the late 70's, but by the time I was a kid selecting my own tunes in the mid 80's, disco was dead and in small town America you just didn't find kids listening to jazz on every street corner. I was not then and am not now a big fan of jazz, but this album from start to finish transcends genres. It's got lots of driving drum and electric bass, very smooth electric guitar that lays down disco riffs when it's not doing gorgeous solos. Chuck Mangione himself plays the flugelhorn, but this band is tight and Mangione doesn't push his solos. Everyone shines.
"Crossroads" was a movie soundtrack that Ry Cooder arranged, produced and played slide guitar over. It's basically Delta Blues. As the only other Ry Cooder album I heard was essentially old Southern minstrel music, for years I assumed Ry Cooder was a Black American from the South. Not until "Bueno Vista Social Club" came out did I realize otherwise. I suppose the music on "Crossroads" is a heavy, old style of blues. Although a soundtrack for a Hollywood film staring Ralph Machio, there's nothing mainstream about the music itself.
Some of my earliest memories of listening to music go back to "Feels So Good" when Dad was playing it on the record player in Spearfish, South Dakota. I would have been 4 years old. It left an impression on me, because I was brave enough to play if for friends in Alpine, Texas, the first year I started middle school. I was a John Denver fanatic at the time, but wouldn't dare play John Denver for my friends, who were all listening big hair rock like Bon Jovi and White Snake. But "Feels So Good" is just such an amazing album. When you hear it the music just lifts you up and takes you to the best of places. It taps into an undeniable human impulse to open up and smile, to feel good. My friends were amazed by this music. They said it was definitely weird, but damned good. Before moving on to another town, in another state, I was able to play the album a few more time for my friends, which in my mind is a testament to the albums staying power.
"Crossroads" is not such a different listening experience. Hearing the crazy vocals and lyrics here will automatically plaster a smile on your face, and the driving harmonica gets feet and fingers tapping in time. I believe my Dad got the tape from a friend, Allen, in when we all lived in Texas. Allen and my dad met at the University of Colorado as hiking buddies, and later in life our families' paths would occasionally follow similar trajectories. For example, our families all lived in the UK at the same time, and later in Texas at the same time. So, I recall this visit to Allen's house in Texas, somewhere Houston. The dude's marriage was falling apart. He was a physisist who worked in weapons development, or some career that sells the soul down the sewer. It was late at night and I think we were just couch crashing on the way to somewhere else. He played these Ry Cooder albums but, half drunk on wine, Allen was waxing nostalgiac talking about the the good times now past, and the Beatles in particular. I remember thinking right then that my Dad was not much a Beatles fan. The evening left an impression on me. Outside of movies, that was the first time I had seen someone stuck on memories of a past golden age. I was probably nine or ten at the time. Now, middle aged with a child of my own and married, it's routine to look back longing for those golden times.
My Dad played "Crossroads" in our old massive Chevy Van as we drove down from Oregon's Mount Hood in the summer of 1985. Our cousins Eric and Jen, plus their parents were packed in with our family of five. When Eric and Jen heard "Crossroads", starting with the tune, Down in Mississippi, they got those smiles plastered on their faces. Jen screamed out; "Holy Cow! What is this?" in disbelief. I think we got two or three songs into the tape before my Aunt Kathee screamed; "Turn it off! It's giving me a headache!" Today I still here those gravely lyrics drawling out; "Down in Mississippi where I was born, down in Mississippi where I come from, way down." On the word "down", another vocal with a deep bass slides in with the deepest of downs. At that time on Mount Hood, cousin Jen, starting high school, was making it her goal in life to wear a different outfit every day of the year. She could sew her own clothes and was a strait A student, and my grandmother from the other side of the family called her the All American Girl. Eric, a full generation ahead of me, was nearing the end of high school. He was a star basketball and football player. He still had the same girlfriend he met in middle school (Kathy) and would later marry, and he was still playing role playing games, board games, war games. Aside from the role playing games (or maybe because of them) Eric was essentially the all American Guy. Eric and Jen were not sure what to do with "Crossroads", but it sure got that slapping time with the harmonica.
Looking back, I see that musically I was a more than a little off from my peers. The only album I ever recall buying before starting college was a Cheiftans tape, Ireland's ambassadors of traditional music.About the only place I went to for music was my Dad's record and tape collection. It was vast and pretty eclectic, abounding with folk and classical music, but also including jazz, rock, blues. Honestly I think I can say that his music included just about every musical trend to hit America prior to 1975. After that it slides off dramatically. I listened to pretty much everything in there once. The music I went back to time and again was John Denver. Before starting middle school I claimed not to listen to anything that had electric guitar. My older brother drove Lief and I into fits of rage and tears by blaring his AC/DC records when our parents were out of the house.
Seventh grade filed trip to Washington DC and New York City. On the long bus ride north, I have this memory. There is the dim cabin of the bus, classmates sprawled out, one student to two seats, mostly trying to sleep or play cards, most listening to the latest top 40 on their Walkmans. Me, I too am listening to my Walkman. It's Peter Paul and Merry's hit, Where Have All the Flowers Gone. I play it over and over again. I am pretending to fall asleep, singing softly, maybe not even audible over the drone of the bus engine. But I hope that Brandy or maybe Alison (but really Brandy) will hear the words of my song and be moved. She will understand my heart and want to become my girlfriend. A few days later we spend the night with several other student groups near Valley Forge. Our chaperones provide us a dance party. We walk in and the new rendition of Wild Thing is playing. Alison and Brandy scream wildly and bust out dancing. Moments like that bring a stark honesty to one's vision. In later years, preparing for those Friday night football games in that dingy Valwood locker room, I would play Andean flute music on a Walkman. This while my teammates thrashed to Motley Crew's Night Train. Again a moment of clarity.
The closest I came to reality in terms of music was the Beatles. I believe at age 17 my twin brother Leif took hold of the family VW van as his primary mode of transportation. Somehow we also came up with several Beatles' albums on tape. A few we may have recorded off of Dad's records, and a few our friends passed to us, and Leif may have even bought one. Anyhow, while driving the Pube Mobile, Leif (now the Great Pube) and I would play Beatles tunes, mostly from the "White Album". David Schert, our musically gifted best friend, bought a Canned Heat tape for us that I sorely miss now. Besides this purchase, he also expanded our collection of music with the selections from the following: Pink Floyd, Santana, Crosby Stills Nash, CCR and Almond Brothers. These we played in the Pube Mobile. At home I still listened to my Dad's records and tapes. And Dad's collection being what it was, it also included a few CCR and Crosby Stills Nash albums.
I followed the beat of a different drummer. I know that for generations we Americans have defined ourselves through the music we choose to listen to, and the music we exclude. For some, music becomes a foundation of their identity. For me, music had a smaller role. I think I could have lived without it and just been content with my own humming and whistling, or my Mom's quiet singing and my Dad's drumming.
Concerts. I've been to a few concerts in my life. The big ones I can list. David Schert and I went to a Who concert in Atlanta. I was completely underwhelmed. David, Mom and I went to an Greg Almond Band concert near Atlanta. We convinced Mom to take us by rattling off a few of their more famous tunes, like Rambling Man. The show was all acid induced groove jams. Mom was underwhelmed, I got a headache, but I think David enjoyed himself a bit. In Colorado's Red Rocks Ampetheater I saw three concerts, all with David Schert and Leif. We smuggled ourselves into the edge of a Dave Mathews Band show. We were more impressed by being tossed out by security than the show itself. Something similar happened at another concert, but I don't even recall who played. The third Red Rocks show was Sarah Mc with the Cheiftans. It's the only big concert where I actually felt a connection with the music and found myself transported. David too, I am happy to say. Near the end a thunderstorm hit. David recalled the old fiddler playing boldly against the wind and those few big drops of rain. Seven or eight years later I went to a U2 concert with cousin Jen in Denver's Pepsi Center. This was shortly after September 11th. It was a huge concert. In part U2 were also paying tribute to the victims of the attacks. I love U2's music, but at this concert I never felt like anything more than a spectator, floating harmlessly around the edge of something that I didn't understand and couldn't be a truly part of.
To think that "Crossroads" and "Feels So Good" stand out as music that has touched me.....
I stop, blink, and wonder, what happened to me? At least these albums are so good that pretty much anyone who has a hankering to listen to music would say; "Well, yes, I can see why this music would leave an impression."
I will pile on a few more thoughts here. As I was unpacking a load of airfreight this morning in Shanghai at our new abode, the Tuscan Tower, out came a little stereo system. I like to listen to music while packing and unpacking, so I plugged in the iPod and decided to play some Velvet Underground, their simplistic edge a needed counterbalance to our new overdone Shanghai neighborhood. As the Velvet Underground began to play, I was immediately taken back to Athens, Georgia, the year 1999, when I fell in love with Shin. She introduced me to the Velvet Underground. I had a simple life a that time. All my belongings fit into my car, I rented from friends without need of a lease, I worked in the UGA Library mail room. Falling in love with Shin was completely the opposite of simple ad turned my life upside down. Now, I am here in my Shanghai house, a very tall three story affair that truly evokes the image of a tower in Tuscany. I am a foreign service officer in the US Department of State. A few blocks away a tailor is making a custom fitted suit for me, plus two dress shirts with white collars. I never wanted a life as complex as this. Such are the compromises one makes for love. Shin's other strong musical influences on me - Cat Stevens, Bell and Sebastian, Silvio Rodrigez, and to take this full circle, The Bueno Vista Social Club.
The albums are, Chuck Mangione's 1977 "Feels So Good" and Ry Cooder's 1986 soundtrack "Crossroads". "Feels So Good" is jazz, but with a lot of groove and disco added in. The title track went to the top of the charts back in the late 70's, but by the time I was a kid selecting my own tunes in the mid 80's, disco was dead and in small town America you just didn't find kids listening to jazz on every street corner. I was not then and am not now a big fan of jazz, but this album from start to finish transcends genres. It's got lots of driving drum and electric bass, very smooth electric guitar that lays down disco riffs when it's not doing gorgeous solos. Chuck Mangione himself plays the flugelhorn, but this band is tight and Mangione doesn't push his solos. Everyone shines."Crossroads" was a movie soundtrack that Ry Cooder arranged, produced and played slide guitar over. It's basically Delta Blues. As the only other Ry Cooder album I heard was essentially old Southern minstrel music, for years I assumed Ry Cooder was a Black American from the South. Not until "Bueno Vista Social Club" came out did I realize otherwise. I suppose the music on "Crossroads" is a heavy, old style of blues. Although a soundtrack for a Hollywood film staring Ralph Machio, there's nothing mainstream about the music itself.
Some of my earliest memories of listening to music go back to "Feels So Good" when Dad was playing it on the record player in Spearfish, South Dakota. I would have been 4 years old. It left an impression on me, because I was brave enough to play if for friends in Alpine, Texas, the first year I started middle school. I was a John Denver fanatic at the time, but wouldn't dare play John Denver for my friends, who were all listening big hair rock like Bon Jovi and White Snake. But "Feels So Good" is just such an amazing album. When you hear it the music just lifts you up and takes you to the best of places. It taps into an undeniable human impulse to open up and smile, to feel good. My friends were amazed by this music. They said it was definitely weird, but damned good. Before moving on to another town, in another state, I was able to play the album a few more time for my friends, which in my mind is a testament to the albums staying power.
"Crossroads" is not such a different listening experience. Hearing the crazy vocals and lyrics here will automatically plaster a smile on your face, and the driving harmonica gets feet and fingers tapping in time. I believe my Dad got the tape from a friend, Allen, in when we all lived in Texas. Allen and my dad met at the University of Colorado as hiking buddies, and later in life our families' paths would occasionally follow similar trajectories. For example, our families all lived in the UK at the same time, and later in Texas at the same time. So, I recall this visit to Allen's house in Texas, somewhere Houston. The dude's marriage was falling apart. He was a physisist who worked in weapons development, or some career that sells the soul down the sewer. It was late at night and I think we were just couch crashing on the way to somewhere else. He played these Ry Cooder albums but, half drunk on wine, Allen was waxing nostalgiac talking about the the good times now past, and the Beatles in particular. I remember thinking right then that my Dad was not much a Beatles fan. The evening left an impression on me. Outside of movies, that was the first time I had seen someone stuck on memories of a past golden age. I was probably nine or ten at the time. Now, middle aged with a child of my own and married, it's routine to look back longing for those golden times.
My Dad played "Crossroads" in our old massive Chevy Van as we drove down from Oregon's Mount Hood in the summer of 1985. Our cousins Eric and Jen, plus their parents were packed in with our family of five. When Eric and Jen heard "Crossroads", starting with the tune, Down in Mississippi, they got those smiles plastered on their faces. Jen screamed out; "Holy Cow! What is this?" in disbelief. I think we got two or three songs into the tape before my Aunt Kathee screamed; "Turn it off! It's giving me a headache!" Today I still here those gravely lyrics drawling out; "Down in Mississippi where I was born, down in Mississippi where I come from, way down." On the word "down", another vocal with a deep bass slides in with the deepest of downs. At that time on Mount Hood, cousin Jen, starting high school, was making it her goal in life to wear a different outfit every day of the year. She could sew her own clothes and was a strait A student, and my grandmother from the other side of the family called her the All American Girl. Eric, a full generation ahead of me, was nearing the end of high school. He was a star basketball and football player. He still had the same girlfriend he met in middle school (Kathy) and would later marry, and he was still playing role playing games, board games, war games. Aside from the role playing games (or maybe because of them) Eric was essentially the all American Guy. Eric and Jen were not sure what to do with "Crossroads", but it sure got that slapping time with the harmonica.
Looking back, I see that musically I was a more than a little off from my peers. The only album I ever recall buying before starting college was a Cheiftans tape, Ireland's ambassadors of traditional music.About the only place I went to for music was my Dad's record and tape collection. It was vast and pretty eclectic, abounding with folk and classical music, but also including jazz, rock, blues. Honestly I think I can say that his music included just about every musical trend to hit America prior to 1975. After that it slides off dramatically. I listened to pretty much everything in there once. The music I went back to time and again was John Denver. Before starting middle school I claimed not to listen to anything that had electric guitar. My older brother drove Lief and I into fits of rage and tears by blaring his AC/DC records when our parents were out of the house.
Seventh grade filed trip to Washington DC and New York City. On the long bus ride north, I have this memory. There is the dim cabin of the bus, classmates sprawled out, one student to two seats, mostly trying to sleep or play cards, most listening to the latest top 40 on their Walkmans. Me, I too am listening to my Walkman. It's Peter Paul and Merry's hit, Where Have All the Flowers Gone. I play it over and over again. I am pretending to fall asleep, singing softly, maybe not even audible over the drone of the bus engine. But I hope that Brandy or maybe Alison (but really Brandy) will hear the words of my song and be moved. She will understand my heart and want to become my girlfriend. A few days later we spend the night with several other student groups near Valley Forge. Our chaperones provide us a dance party. We walk in and the new rendition of Wild Thing is playing. Alison and Brandy scream wildly and bust out dancing. Moments like that bring a stark honesty to one's vision. In later years, preparing for those Friday night football games in that dingy Valwood locker room, I would play Andean flute music on a Walkman. This while my teammates thrashed to Motley Crew's Night Train. Again a moment of clarity.
The closest I came to reality in terms of music was the Beatles. I believe at age 17 my twin brother Leif took hold of the family VW van as his primary mode of transportation. Somehow we also came up with several Beatles' albums on tape. A few we may have recorded off of Dad's records, and a few our friends passed to us, and Leif may have even bought one. Anyhow, while driving the Pube Mobile, Leif (now the Great Pube) and I would play Beatles tunes, mostly from the "White Album". David Schert, our musically gifted best friend, bought a Canned Heat tape for us that I sorely miss now. Besides this purchase, he also expanded our collection of music with the selections from the following: Pink Floyd, Santana, Crosby Stills Nash, CCR and Almond Brothers. These we played in the Pube Mobile. At home I still listened to my Dad's records and tapes. And Dad's collection being what it was, it also included a few CCR and Crosby Stills Nash albums.
I followed the beat of a different drummer. I know that for generations we Americans have defined ourselves through the music we choose to listen to, and the music we exclude. For some, music becomes a foundation of their identity. For me, music had a smaller role. I think I could have lived without it and just been content with my own humming and whistling, or my Mom's quiet singing and my Dad's drumming.
Concerts. I've been to a few concerts in my life. The big ones I can list. David Schert and I went to a Who concert in Atlanta. I was completely underwhelmed. David, Mom and I went to an Greg Almond Band concert near Atlanta. We convinced Mom to take us by rattling off a few of their more famous tunes, like Rambling Man. The show was all acid induced groove jams. Mom was underwhelmed, I got a headache, but I think David enjoyed himself a bit. In Colorado's Red Rocks Ampetheater I saw three concerts, all with David Schert and Leif. We smuggled ourselves into the edge of a Dave Mathews Band show. We were more impressed by being tossed out by security than the show itself. Something similar happened at another concert, but I don't even recall who played. The third Red Rocks show was Sarah Mc with the Cheiftans. It's the only big concert where I actually felt a connection with the music and found myself transported. David too, I am happy to say. Near the end a thunderstorm hit. David recalled the old fiddler playing boldly against the wind and those few big drops of rain. Seven or eight years later I went to a U2 concert with cousin Jen in Denver's Pepsi Center. This was shortly after September 11th. It was a huge concert. In part U2 were also paying tribute to the victims of the attacks. I love U2's music, but at this concert I never felt like anything more than a spectator, floating harmlessly around the edge of something that I didn't understand and couldn't be a truly part of.
To think that "Crossroads" and "Feels So Good" stand out as music that has touched me.....
I stop, blink, and wonder, what happened to me? At least these albums are so good that pretty much anyone who has a hankering to listen to music would say; "Well, yes, I can see why this music would leave an impression."
I will pile on a few more thoughts here. As I was unpacking a load of airfreight this morning in Shanghai at our new abode, the Tuscan Tower, out came a little stereo system. I like to listen to music while packing and unpacking, so I plugged in the iPod and decided to play some Velvet Underground, their simplistic edge a needed counterbalance to our new overdone Shanghai neighborhood. As the Velvet Underground began to play, I was immediately taken back to Athens, Georgia, the year 1999, when I fell in love with Shin. She introduced me to the Velvet Underground. I had a simple life a that time. All my belongings fit into my car, I rented from friends without need of a lease, I worked in the UGA Library mail room. Falling in love with Shin was completely the opposite of simple ad turned my life upside down. Now, I am here in my Shanghai house, a very tall three story affair that truly evokes the image of a tower in Tuscany. I am a foreign service officer in the US Department of State. A few blocks away a tailor is making a custom fitted suit for me, plus two dress shirts with white collars. I never wanted a life as complex as this. Such are the compromises one makes for love. Shin's other strong musical influences on me - Cat Stevens, Bell and Sebastian, Silvio Rodrigez, and to take this full circle, The Bueno Vista Social Club.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
The landscape artist Larry Elmore
Still awash in memories, I've decided to tackle them from a more obtuse angle by getting back to thoughts on fantasy (make that D&D for now) art work. There is a newly dominant cadre of gamers that refers to themselves as the Old School Renaissance, or the OSR. Although newly emerged, these folks are all older, haven taken up Dungeons and Dragons in the 1970's and early 80's. They look back to the earlier years of role playing games as the best of times, a Golden Age of creativity that collapsed under the weight of its own success. Or, in simple terms, the OSR loves dungeon crawls without the story heavy and heroic plot elements of later years. They prefer more open ended play to the reams of structure that were progressively added to their games with hundreds of rule books and prefabricated settings. They prefer home grown business to the the more faceless corporations that bought up the most successful role playing games. One the standard bearers of the OSR is a blogger and game designer James Maliszewski, known as Grognardia. Mr. Maliszewski has envisioned a history of role playing games that he has so far divided into three: the Golden Age, the Silver Age, and the Age of Everything Thereafter. The OSR takes it's inspiration from the Golden Age, or the age when role playing games and Dungeons and Dragons were born. The age of Gary Gygax, and artists like Otis. Maliszewski harbors much ill will for the Silver Age of D&D, when Gygax was forced out of the company he created, and the popularity of the game reached its zenith.
I started playing D&D in this so called Silver Age. I loved it. The Silver Age took adventures from bleak and restricted confines of dungeons to the surface, where whole worlds of adventure on the grandest of scales awaited. The artist Larry Elmore captured this spirit more than anyone else doing fantasy artwork at the time.
As I wrote earlier, Elmore's style, grounded in the realist school of painting, carried a sense of the familiar and accessible with it. From his paintings, I could look around my own very real world and easily imagine signs of the fantastic. Here is the perfect example of what I am referring to.
This is a fairly typical Elmore painting with its wide landscape, a rather humanistic (or naturalistic) take on a dragon, and a mundane group of adventures on the brink of of combat. Note the mountain in the background. It's Longs Peak on Colorado's Front Range. I've see this view a hundred times. The scenery in Elmore's paintings are strait from my world. Hiking and climbing in the Rocky Mountains as teens, my twin brother and a friend or two would always brings along paper, pencil and dice, settling into a session of D&D if the opportunity presented itself. Even today, when I am outside in nature, I imagine elves behind the trees, spirits in the streams, dwarven caves in the mountains, and so on. Due to Elmore's paintings, when I am in the great out of doors, I am also almost always imaging the vaguely magical. In a way it's kind of fun, but it's also rather distracting and gets in the way of real beauty of nature that surrounds me.
Below I have included a few of Elmore's classics that defined the Silver Age of D&D. The first is, in my opinion, the very best of any Elmore painting that I have seen. None of his other works tells a story and displays as much mood and emotion as this one does. I believe it is called "The Death of Sturm". It comes from the Dragon Lance novels.
Next, another Dragon lance Painting. This one probably causes Mr. Maliszewski great pain as it represents the ascendance of Dragon Lance. This beauty is perhaps Elmore's most recognizable painting. Gracing the cover of the 1st Dragon Lance novel, "Dragons of Autumn Twilight", it helped to make the books a sensation. It also marked a very conscious turning point in the D&D brand to move into publishing novels, at the same time giving adventures and settings much more epic scale and plot. I'll always remember this cover in my cousin Eric's room. I was six. What else can I say?
Here is a painting that represents D&D as Leif and I played it; paired down, mostly simple adventures still lacking that epic scope. We never had a player character that advanced beyond 9th or 10th level. This is called "Dragon Slayers and Proud of It". It has a classical quality to it that none of Elmore's other paintings display, most especially seen in the muted tones of light and sky. I rather like this painting, mundane as it is.
I started playing D&D in this so called Silver Age. I loved it. The Silver Age took adventures from bleak and restricted confines of dungeons to the surface, where whole worlds of adventure on the grandest of scales awaited. The artist Larry Elmore captured this spirit more than anyone else doing fantasy artwork at the time.
As I wrote earlier, Elmore's style, grounded in the realist school of painting, carried a sense of the familiar and accessible with it. From his paintings, I could look around my own very real world and easily imagine signs of the fantastic. Here is the perfect example of what I am referring to.
This is a fairly typical Elmore painting with its wide landscape, a rather humanistic (or naturalistic) take on a dragon, and a mundane group of adventures on the brink of of combat. Note the mountain in the background. It's Longs Peak on Colorado's Front Range. I've see this view a hundred times. The scenery in Elmore's paintings are strait from my world. Hiking and climbing in the Rocky Mountains as teens, my twin brother and a friend or two would always brings along paper, pencil and dice, settling into a session of D&D if the opportunity presented itself. Even today, when I am outside in nature, I imagine elves behind the trees, spirits in the streams, dwarven caves in the mountains, and so on. Due to Elmore's paintings, when I am in the great out of doors, I am also almost always imaging the vaguely magical. In a way it's kind of fun, but it's also rather distracting and gets in the way of real beauty of nature that surrounds me.
Below I have included a few of Elmore's classics that defined the Silver Age of D&D. The first is, in my opinion, the very best of any Elmore painting that I have seen. None of his other works tells a story and displays as much mood and emotion as this one does. I believe it is called "The Death of Sturm". It comes from the Dragon Lance novels.
Next, another Dragon lance Painting. This one probably causes Mr. Maliszewski great pain as it represents the ascendance of Dragon Lance. This beauty is perhaps Elmore's most recognizable painting. Gracing the cover of the 1st Dragon Lance novel, "Dragons of Autumn Twilight", it helped to make the books a sensation. It also marked a very conscious turning point in the D&D brand to move into publishing novels, at the same time giving adventures and settings much more epic scale and plot. I'll always remember this cover in my cousin Eric's room. I was six. What else can I say?
Here is a painting that represents D&D as Leif and I played it; paired down, mostly simple adventures still lacking that epic scope. We never had a player character that advanced beyond 9th or 10th level. This is called "Dragon Slayers and Proud of It". It has a classical quality to it that none of Elmore's other paintings display, most especially seen in the muted tones of light and sky. I rather like this painting, mundane as it is.
Looking through Elmore's catalogue of work, I must add the final comment that he rarely depicts actual combat, and when he does, it tends to have a staged and wooden feel. Save for the covers on the Red, Blue ad Green D&D Basic boxed sets, his best works are more portrait like in their character.
End of May muse
May is gone. I cannot remember what I wanted to write about in May. It will catch me next month.
In other news, the once brown and gray, woods, having already taken on the green buds of springs, have now transformed into a lush, green, jungle.
In other news, the once brown and gray, woods, having already taken on the green buds of springs, have now transformed into a lush, green, jungle.
Return to Egypt
I started this blog with a small quote from "The Happy Prince." It is essentially the swallow happily singing "tonight I fly to Egypt." As I wrote then, one reason for beginning the blog with that quote was the memory it conjures up of watching the "The Happy Prince" as a film reel in elementary school. The memory of the film, and the film itself are painfully nostalgic. There is a second reason. I lived for nine months in Cairo, Egypt, celebrating my 22nd birthday there. That time in Egypt has had a profound impact on my life. Among other things, if I had not lived in Cairo, I don't believe I would have opened up enough to fall in love with my wife, Shin. For at least a year after moving back to the States from Egypt, my memory and imagination daily lingered on my life on the Nile River.And now I can turn my thoughts towards other events and episodes that have had an obvious impact on my life. There was the summer anthropology field school with UGA that took us from Athens, Georgia, to the Georgia coast, to the California coast, and back again, all the while camping out under the stars ad taking copious notes in our field journals about such and such rocks. The day we departed Athens, our professors told us point blank that the experience would carry a profound influence into our lives. For me, it influenced my first year of college and introduced me to the game of toli.
Toli, called stick ball, or otherwise known as the Little Brother of War. It was a native American ball game I played during my UGA years. Along with the company of Tom Deitz, stick ball introduced me to another side of the South that had much greater interest and meaning for me. I also met a lot of very interesting friends who were just as far gone from mainstream society as I was. It was one of the few areas in my life where I felt comfortably at home in my own skin. The last game I played outside of Athens was one of our Moundville, Alabama games, a year after I had graduated from UGA. I flew in from Arizona, took a shuttle van from Burmingham to Tuscalusa, and then walked, jogged and sprinted the 15 miles from Tuscalusa to Moundville. The game wasn't much because the Choctaw did not show up, but the night spent walking around the ancient mounds in the cool, silvery mist is enshrined in my memory.
The summers from 1989 to 1993 spent with my family in the mountains of the American (including Canada) West. There were a lot of miles spent in cars or the old VW van watching landscapes empty of people pass by, listening to cool old music like Pink Floyd. There were lots of small backpacking trips and a good many mountains climbed. It was one of the few times I seriously dreamed about a future job - smoke jumper. These are also the best memories I have of my Dad.
Of course falling in love with and marrying Shin has had the most present impact on my life. Next I should write "enough said", however I must add that I fell in love with Shin at age 24. Prior to that I had never had a girl friend, never kissed a girl (or boy), and had promised myself that I never would. So, falling in love with Shin was a big thing for me.
Quite a few painful events must be included here as major life influences. These include the year I spent teaching English in Singapore, my five months of student teaching horror two years later in the United States, multiple moves as a youngster the worst of which was the move to Georgia, and finally the death of my Mom and her mom, Grandma Diss.
What I find strange is that despite the prominence of these events and experiences in my life, they have had virtually no presence in my memories since Solveig was born. The past two and a half years have all been random memories, mostly from my life prior to Georgia.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
The headwaters of memory
My twin brother, Leif, has a fleeting interest in astrology. Not run-of-the-mill find your horoscope in the back of the news astrology, but the deep esoteric roots of astrology. Me, I am not so interested. Still, when Leif showed me an astrology book that contained character traits associated with the time of our birth (year, month, day, hour, minute, location, etc.), he had my rapt attention. The book described our personalities remarkably well. Among the traits described was the never ending child. That never ending child.
In the 3rd grade I heard my classmates talking about what sports they wanted to play in high school, where they wanted to go to college, etc. It didn't make sense to me. I was fully content being a kid. I promised myself then that I would never grow up. Arrive at the present. Because technically I am no longer a child, but without a doubt still retain a child's thinking, I tend to live in the past. I have always had a fondness for history and the past. We moved a great deal as I was growing up (still moving a great deal now). So, longing for that place we last lived, those friends left behind, that sense of belonging, also has me living in the past more than most people do. Result, memory tends to dominant my thinking more and more. I also found that after my daughter was born memories from my childhood began flooding in at random. And I mean immediately after she was born. Here's a few quick examples:
I recalled dreaming of my grandmother's house in New Jersey. In my dream it is her house, though I suspect I never went to that house. All of my actual memories of Grandma Diss are from Boulder, Colorado, not New Jersey. But after Solveig was born, this dream I had when I was perhaps five years old jumped right out. It's just me wandering though curtained rooms full of covered furniture, very quiet and mysterious. Below is a picture of Grandma Diss in New Jersey for Aunt Diana's wedding. This was well before I was born, but it reminds me of her life in New Jersey, dramatically different from the colorful later-day hippie-lady she became in Boulder.
Another odd memory that popped into my head was a graphic novel my parents bought for Leif and I when we lived in Alpine Texas: "Comanche Moon!" by Jack Jackson. Several illustrations from the novel came back to me, as well as the general outline of Quanah Parker's life. He was the last chief of the Comanche, and technically never surrendered to the US Gov. His mother, Cynthia Anne Parker, was a Anglo American kidnapped as a young girl by the Comanche. She became the wife of a prominent Comanche chief and essentially became a full Comanche herself. Later in life she was recaptured by US soldiers (or Texas Rangers?). Separated from her "true" family, she died not too long after of a broken heart. Why the heck did this all randomly come back to me? I went to a local Multnomah County Library (Hollywood District) in Portland and actually found the same graphic novel. Of course I checked it out and read through it once again, some 27 or 28 years after my first reading. It was still a fascinating and beautiful book. Here's the cover and an interior illustration. I must say that at age 9 or 10 text held much less interest for me than pictures, and I was a little below reading level for my age. Last of all, though I clearly remember the book, my memory is a little fuzzy on where my parents purchased it. However, as I sit here writing, I believe it was at one of Big Bend National Park's book stores. Ah, more memories come floating in. Such a magical place the Big Bend was. How does one dig out of these memories, or give them a gentle embrace and let them float on their way?
In the 3rd grade I heard my classmates talking about what sports they wanted to play in high school, where they wanted to go to college, etc. It didn't make sense to me. I was fully content being a kid. I promised myself then that I would never grow up. Arrive at the present. Because technically I am no longer a child, but without a doubt still retain a child's thinking, I tend to live in the past. I have always had a fondness for history and the past. We moved a great deal as I was growing up (still moving a great deal now). So, longing for that place we last lived, those friends left behind, that sense of belonging, also has me living in the past more than most people do. Result, memory tends to dominant my thinking more and more. I also found that after my daughter was born memories from my childhood began flooding in at random. And I mean immediately after she was born. Here's a few quick examples:
I recalled dreaming of my grandmother's house in New Jersey. In my dream it is her house, though I suspect I never went to that house. All of my actual memories of Grandma Diss are from Boulder, Colorado, not New Jersey. But after Solveig was born, this dream I had when I was perhaps five years old jumped right out. It's just me wandering though curtained rooms full of covered furniture, very quiet and mysterious. Below is a picture of Grandma Diss in New Jersey for Aunt Diana's wedding. This was well before I was born, but it reminds me of her life in New Jersey, dramatically different from the colorful later-day hippie-lady she became in Boulder.
Another odd memory that popped into my head was a graphic novel my parents bought for Leif and I when we lived in Alpine Texas: "Comanche Moon!" by Jack Jackson. Several illustrations from the novel came back to me, as well as the general outline of Quanah Parker's life. He was the last chief of the Comanche, and technically never surrendered to the US Gov. His mother, Cynthia Anne Parker, was a Anglo American kidnapped as a young girl by the Comanche. She became the wife of a prominent Comanche chief and essentially became a full Comanche herself. Later in life she was recaptured by US soldiers (or Texas Rangers?). Separated from her "true" family, she died not too long after of a broken heart. Why the heck did this all randomly come back to me? I went to a local Multnomah County Library (Hollywood District) in Portland and actually found the same graphic novel. Of course I checked it out and read through it once again, some 27 or 28 years after my first reading. It was still a fascinating and beautiful book. Here's the cover and an interior illustration. I must say that at age 9 or 10 text held much less interest for me than pictures, and I was a little below reading level for my age. Last of all, though I clearly remember the book, my memory is a little fuzzy on where my parents purchased it. However, as I sit here writing, I believe it was at one of Big Bend National Park's book stores. Ah, more memories come floating in. Such a magical place the Big Bend was. How does one dig out of these memories, or give them a gentle embrace and let them float on their way?
Friday, May 4, 2012
The Ant and the Crocdile
I cannot avoid not posting something about my daughter, my "Little Bean" this early on.
Solveig is about two and a half years old right now. It just occurred to me tonight that we have an ongoing theme we carry out most nights when I give her a bath. She has two random toys, a small plastic ant and a slightly larger crocodile.Most nights Solveig will drop them in the bath and then we take up the roles of Crocodile (Solveig) and Ant (me). The two swim around and practice dives, and kind of mumble at each other. We hadn't played crocodile and ant for several days. Tonight Solveig had them both out in the bath. I thought she might play with them on her own, but after a moment she looked up at me and simply asked "Ant?" I was so happy that she would still include me in the game.
Since this blog is about memory, I should probably add more Solveig moments. My wife, Shin, and I have a collection of notes commenting on what we think of as major landmarks in Solveig's life. I've found that as Solveig grows older, almost everything she does is surprising, sparkling or new. At two plus she's grown into her own person. There is just no way to keep up with all of those big moments. Then take me, approaching forty. Despite my many years, I feel that there's less I can fall back on regarding memories of my own big moments than Solvieg has. Either way, if I was to try to cover more than a sampling of memories regarding either of our lives, I'd spend the remainder of my time just writing about memories. Swimming in a pool of memories; doggy paddle, breast stroke, free style, butterfly on the back....
Solveig is about two and a half years old right now. It just occurred to me tonight that we have an ongoing theme we carry out most nights when I give her a bath. She has two random toys, a small plastic ant and a slightly larger crocodile.Most nights Solveig will drop them in the bath and then we take up the roles of Crocodile (Solveig) and Ant (me). The two swim around and practice dives, and kind of mumble at each other. We hadn't played crocodile and ant for several days. Tonight Solveig had them both out in the bath. I thought she might play with them on her own, but after a moment she looked up at me and simply asked "Ant?" I was so happy that she would still include me in the game.
Since this blog is about memory, I should probably add more Solveig moments. My wife, Shin, and I have a collection of notes commenting on what we think of as major landmarks in Solveig's life. I've found that as Solveig grows older, almost everything she does is surprising, sparkling or new. At two plus she's grown into her own person. There is just no way to keep up with all of those big moments. Then take me, approaching forty. Despite my many years, I feel that there's less I can fall back on regarding memories of my own big moments than Solvieg has. Either way, if I was to try to cover more than a sampling of memories regarding either of our lives, I'd spend the remainder of my time just writing about memories. Swimming in a pool of memories; doggy paddle, breast stroke, free style, butterfly on the back....
Monday, April 16, 2012
Otus and Elmore open the art review
Each week I'd like to comment on some aspects of fantasy art. The artwork accompanying role playing games was one of their biggest draws for me, and always bring back vivid memories. There was a period in high school when my brother and I also scrounged fantasy novel book covers for scenes and characters that would inspire D&D adventures. Yet for the most part I was drawn to the artwork we found in role playing games. While a novel can paint wonderful scenes and characters through language, role playing games lean more heavily on their artwork to conjure images. Some game masters (like my cousin, Eric) can paint vivid images through the spoken word. Sometimes my imagination can take flight of its own accord during a role playing adventure, creating the most memorable of scenes. Still, I love looking at the art work of role playing games. With little debate, it can be said that Dungeons and Dragons has produced among the very best of role playing game art. So, without further dilly-dally, here is an early classic by the infamous Larry Elmore.
This painting graced the cover of the 1983 Dungeons & Dragons Basic boxed rules set written by Frank Mentzer. It is otherwise known as the "Red Box" partly in reference to Elmore's red dragon. This edition of D&D was a reorganized printing of the Moldavy penned edition from1981, which was in turn a reorganization of the Holmes' edition from 1977, mentioned in a previous post. I mention these earlier editions because so many D&D fans have an image of the game ascociated with the cover painting from the edition they started playing. The Old School D&D revivalists have a particular love for anything pre-1983, which also gives them a dislike for anything, including art, ascociated with later editions. Presented next is the cover to Moldavy's 1981 boxed set, with a painting done by Erol Otus. Otus is considered by the Old Schoolers to be one of the the greats of D&D art.
I never owned any books with Otus art, but I saw plenty of them. I would agree that Otus is among the greats of the fantasy art genre, and his paintings have an unmistakable dreamlike, or an other-worldly, quality to it that has never been revisited in the artwork that graces D&D books. If you take these three paintings by David Sutherland (Holmes' 1977 edition) Otus and Elmore, you see that the subject is basically the same.
There is a dragon in its lair, treasures galore, and a warrior ready to to do battle with the great beast. The first two editions also have wizards, or magic users, added to the scene. Despite the similarity in content, the styles are wildly different. Sutherland's painting is etched deep in my memory as the first image of D&D I saw. I love it, even though Sutherland's artistic technical skills border on amateurish. Many players who took up the game after 1983 tend to look at Otus' paintings as amateurish and just plain weird, but the truth is that his technical skills as a painter are quite good. I suppose to many (particularly fans of Elmore and the like) Otus' skill is not immediately apparent due to his more simplistic style. To Otus' solid technical skills add the distinctive tone of his work, the surealism and strangeness of it, and you have a great composer of fantasy art.
Then there is Elmore. His cover painting for the "Red Box" was a revolution in the role playing game world, as well as fantasy art in general. This painting of the red dragon and warrior immediately leaps out as something very nearly real. It is vivid, dynamic and tangible. Anyone looking at it can feel as if they are right there on the edge of the action. Compared to Sutherland and Otus, Elmore's work also simply looks professional. For almost two decades Elmore's realistic style of painting defined the direction of fantasy art work.
The first Dungeons and Dragons product that my twin brother and I bought (well, I am sure our Mom gave us the money) was the "Red Box". We were nine years old on a family road trip traveling America's great Northwest, camped out in an Oregon State Park near the coast. My Dad was in Portland doing an interview with the Portland Museum of Art. My older brother Tor was off fishing at a pond much deeper in the forest. Leif, Mom and I sat at a picknick table unwrapping the box. It was just before sunset. I remember the tent, the campfire. Most every fan of D&D has that similar first "real" experience with the game that lives on in their memory; elevating that picture gracing the front cover of their first book to a lofty height that will forever define their image of role playing games and the world of fantasy in general.
So, yes, for me it was Larry Elmore and his red dragon and warrior. Leif and I spent hours that night reading through the books, setting up the dice (you had to color the numbers in with a wax crayon in those days) admiring the two pot mental figures that came with the set. We stayed up for hours because Tor never came back from fishing. All three of us, Mom included, delved into the "Red Box" to distract our growing apprehension at Tor's absence. The first book in the set included a short solo adventure that introduced players to the basic rules of D&D and provided the feel for role playing games. This was the story of Aleena the Cleric. Several classic black and white ink drawings by Elmore accompanied the adventure, which included zombies, an evil wizard, and the cleric laying dead on a dungeon floor. These were not the sort of pictures I really wanted to be looking at in the dark of night at age nine, camping in a forest, waiting for your missing brother to return. We all became so edgy that finally we began shouting for Tor, headless of the other campers, who I am sure heard the of fear in our voices. Tor eventually came trudging back into camp, into the light of our our fire. He told us the tale of how he had lost track of time and not started back towards came until twilight. He lost the trail in the dark (with visions of Friday the 13th stuck in his head) and had wandered around for a terrible long while until our shouts helped him find his way back to camp. With Tor safely back, we could once again happily appreciate the promises of adventure that the "Red Box" had to offer.
Below are some of the Elmore drawings that accompanied the story of Aleena the Cleric. There are many times when I find Elmore's black and white ink drawings to be more evocative than his paintings. The drawing of the warrior standing over his fallen friend is one example.
Last of all for this post, the cover paintings from the "Blue" and "Green" boxed sets that served to round out my introduction to D&D. These are more typical of a majority of Elmore's work with wilderness settings as opposed to dungeons or other interior. I love both of these paintings as much as the "Red Box" cover. I also loved how they brought the game out from the dungeon and into the living world above.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Wind Master and Viking Boy meet
Thomas F. Deitz has been on my mind lately. Tom was a marginally well known fantasy novel author in the 1980's and 1990's. He was a peer in the Society for Creative Anachronism, being a member of the Order of the Laurel. He was a rather accomplished visual artist, as well as an exceptionally good tailor. Tom collected fantasy and science fiction novels like no body's business. Wall-to-wall bookshelves teeming with said literature were part and parcel to his abode. Tom also collected old Lincoln Continentals and car magazines. He had nearly as many car model kits as he had novels. If you were either an automobile or fantasy enthusiast, Tom's ramshackle dwellings were national treasures.
Tom in SCA garb playing the herald
For all this, my relationship with Tom was simply as a friend. We had our first introduction at an SCA meeting at the University of Georgia, and crossed paths again a few days later at a Toli practice, also at the University of Georgia. More on SCA and Toli in posts to follow. This was my first week at UGA as an undergraduate student. Tom had graduated years earlier with a Master's in English, but the impish inclination in Tom was powerful and he never left the liberal and youthful world of the college campus behind. I had no inkling of Tom's accomplishments when I met him. Later on, his accomplishments never played a role in our friendship. What I loved about Tom was his free spirit, his odd courage, and the fact that he was just simply a gentle and pleasant person. Tom had a small catalogue of phobia's, including driving cars. (So odd considering how much he loved the things. When driving, Tom would take massive detours to avoid making left turns.) Despite Tom's fears, on our second meeting, Tom was playing Toli, one of the more violent sports on the planet. Physical prowess was never one of Tom's strong points. When we first met he was a small, rather soft looking, middle aged man with a beer gut. I thought it was so cool that he still had the gumption to play such a physical and dangerous sport.
Truth be told, Tom took an interest in me right away. I had a Viking name and a Viking appearance, complete with long, blonde hair. I must have looked like a character from one of his books come to life. Tom often called me Viking Boy. Whatever the circumstances of meeting, we became close friends, and it was a friendship that never included much of anything beyond sitting down to talk about life. Despite having so many parallel interests (cars not included) we never played role playing games together, we did very little SCA activity together, we didn't discuss literature, or fantasy novels, or even JRR Tolkein. I olnly read one of Tom's books, his first one, Windmaster's Bane. Although we both loved traveling, we only took one trip together, which was to pick up a car my twin brother had abandoned in Mississippi. We took a train down and drove the car back to Georgia. With Toli, Tom showed up less and less as the years went on. He didn't have health insurance. So, Tom and I were just friends, kindred spirits I suppose. We clicked in the most ordinary of ways. Tom was one of my favorite people. But, as Tom said once, we never found ourselves on the same page. We never really did. I was one of his odd-ball younger friends that would show up out of the blue, then disappear just a quickly. He also called me Chaos Boy, both because of my personality, but also on account of the chaos I threw his life into when I made my random visits. We both wanted a closer or more grounded friendship, but these thoughts occurred at different times and on different assumptions between us.
There is much more to be said about Tom. For now I will just add one memory that really describes Tom's character. When visiting him once in his home town of Young Harris, Tom and I were shooting the breeze as usual. Tom was drinking a beer, expanding (or improving upon) the gut, and I was probably drinking tap water since I don't drink alcohol and Tom never had any beverages in his house other than beer and tap water. Anyhow, Tom told me about this encounter he had had earlier that day in the little post office up the street. Tom was fetching his mail out of his PO box, and chatting with whoever else was there, as was pretty typical for Tom. One middle aged southern belle who had driven up from Atlanta for the weekend appreciated Tom's friendliness and found fit to tell him how awful it was that Georgia was getting overwhelmed by Mexicans and you couldn't hardly go anywhere where now without seeing a Mexican. She was about to say more, but Tom cut her short with a passionate oratory. How dare she think he shared her ignorant and racist views just because he was white and had a Southern accent. He could only wish that there were more Mexicans or El Salvadorans or anyone of some foreign extract in his home town. Every time he ate out (nearly every night really) Tom went to the Mexican restaurant in Hiawasee, or the Thai restaurant in Hiawasee, because the restaurant owners and their families were so friendly, open minded, hard working, and knowledgeable about the world, and their food tasted better to boot. having said his fill, Tom turned around and walked out, leaving her gap mouthed and fumbling for some sort of response.
That was Tom, in his own way brave and fierce, an advocate of free thinking, diversity, and just keeping life as interesting as possible. He lived what he believed in. He also told me it was not great form to end sentences with prepositions. Now every time I end prepositionally, I am reminded that I am not at all a good writer. And I remember Tom.
Tom died of heart failure a few years ago, in 2009, surprisingly young since all of his elder kin folk lived into the 90's or beyond. I think Tom's mother even outlived him.
This is a link to an exhibit celebrating Tom's life and work. I miss Tom. He had such a great impact on my life in college, a very formative time. I miss Tom because he was such a good friend.
http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/pexhibit/deitz/index.html
Tom in SCA garb playing the herald For all this, my relationship with Tom was simply as a friend. We had our first introduction at an SCA meeting at the University of Georgia, and crossed paths again a few days later at a Toli practice, also at the University of Georgia. More on SCA and Toli in posts to follow. This was my first week at UGA as an undergraduate student. Tom had graduated years earlier with a Master's in English, but the impish inclination in Tom was powerful and he never left the liberal and youthful world of the college campus behind. I had no inkling of Tom's accomplishments when I met him. Later on, his accomplishments never played a role in our friendship. What I loved about Tom was his free spirit, his odd courage, and the fact that he was just simply a gentle and pleasant person. Tom had a small catalogue of phobia's, including driving cars. (So odd considering how much he loved the things. When driving, Tom would take massive detours to avoid making left turns.) Despite Tom's fears, on our second meeting, Tom was playing Toli, one of the more violent sports on the planet. Physical prowess was never one of Tom's strong points. When we first met he was a small, rather soft looking, middle aged man with a beer gut. I thought it was so cool that he still had the gumption to play such a physical and dangerous sport.
Truth be told, Tom took an interest in me right away. I had a Viking name and a Viking appearance, complete with long, blonde hair. I must have looked like a character from one of his books come to life. Tom often called me Viking Boy. Whatever the circumstances of meeting, we became close friends, and it was a friendship that never included much of anything beyond sitting down to talk about life. Despite having so many parallel interests (cars not included) we never played role playing games together, we did very little SCA activity together, we didn't discuss literature, or fantasy novels, or even JRR Tolkein. I olnly read one of Tom's books, his first one, Windmaster's Bane. Although we both loved traveling, we only took one trip together, which was to pick up a car my twin brother had abandoned in Mississippi. We took a train down and drove the car back to Georgia. With Toli, Tom showed up less and less as the years went on. He didn't have health insurance. So, Tom and I were just friends, kindred spirits I suppose. We clicked in the most ordinary of ways. Tom was one of my favorite people. But, as Tom said once, we never found ourselves on the same page. We never really did. I was one of his odd-ball younger friends that would show up out of the blue, then disappear just a quickly. He also called me Chaos Boy, both because of my personality, but also on account of the chaos I threw his life into when I made my random visits. We both wanted a closer or more grounded friendship, but these thoughts occurred at different times and on different assumptions between us.
Windmaster's Bane, by Tom Deitz
There is much more to be said about Tom. For now I will just add one memory that really describes Tom's character. When visiting him once in his home town of Young Harris, Tom and I were shooting the breeze as usual. Tom was drinking a beer, expanding (or improving upon) the gut, and I was probably drinking tap water since I don't drink alcohol and Tom never had any beverages in his house other than beer and tap water. Anyhow, Tom told me about this encounter he had had earlier that day in the little post office up the street. Tom was fetching his mail out of his PO box, and chatting with whoever else was there, as was pretty typical for Tom. One middle aged southern belle who had driven up from Atlanta for the weekend appreciated Tom's friendliness and found fit to tell him how awful it was that Georgia was getting overwhelmed by Mexicans and you couldn't hardly go anywhere where now without seeing a Mexican. She was about to say more, but Tom cut her short with a passionate oratory. How dare she think he shared her ignorant and racist views just because he was white and had a Southern accent. He could only wish that there were more Mexicans or El Salvadorans or anyone of some foreign extract in his home town. Every time he ate out (nearly every night really) Tom went to the Mexican restaurant in Hiawasee, or the Thai restaurant in Hiawasee, because the restaurant owners and their families were so friendly, open minded, hard working, and knowledgeable about the world, and their food tasted better to boot. having said his fill, Tom turned around and walked out, leaving her gap mouthed and fumbling for some sort of response.
That was Tom, in his own way brave and fierce, an advocate of free thinking, diversity, and just keeping life as interesting as possible. He lived what he believed in. He also told me it was not great form to end sentences with prepositions. Now every time I end prepositionally, I am reminded that I am not at all a good writer. And I remember Tom.
Tom died of heart failure a few years ago, in 2009, surprisingly young since all of his elder kin folk lived into the 90's or beyond. I think Tom's mother even outlived him.
This is a link to an exhibit celebrating Tom's life and work. I miss Tom. He had such a great impact on my life in college, a very formative time. I miss Tom because he was such a good friend.
http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/pexhibit/deitz/index.html
Friday, April 13, 2012
The first adventure
I was rather young when my cousin, Eric, introduced my brothers and I to the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons. Eric must have been a junior high school student at the time. I was age six. This would have been about 1980 or 1981.
I hesitate to label myself a D&D nerd, or a role playing game fanatic. I hardly fit the stereotype. Yet that first encounter with D&D is still very memorable. It was a magical moment. As a six year old I listened, fully enthralled, as Eric described our characters making their way up a stony forest path, stumbling into a trap and set upon by goblins. Eric was ruthless as a dungeon master. Within minutes all of our characters lay dead on the hard, cold ground. His dad, Uncle Dick, made the oft-hand comment that Eric should take it easy on kids as young as us. I don't recall a stitch of who or what our characters were, but to a six year old, the scene Eric painted was better than any movie or storybook. There was that narrow path littered with rocks, a dark and cloud filled sky, a biting wind carrying dry leaves and scattered rain drops into our faces, and a forest of bare trees with the winter closing in.
Eric and his family lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. At the time we lived in Spearfish, South Dakota. On that long car drive home we played D&D for hours on end. We had no rule books or dice, just paper, a pencil, and our imaginations. We tore paper into little scraps and numbered them from 1 to 20. This served as our dice. We would take turns being the dungeon master, whose main job was to draw simple cave maps. There would be a few winding tunnels connecting several caverns, each of which had a monster living in it. Because my twin brother and I had an awful fear of spiders at the time, giant spiders featured prominently among our very small cast of monsters. One cavern would always hold a chest full of treasure, but our main goal seemed to be to kill the giant spider. The characters we created on that car ride were always simple fighter/warrior types. I guess they had two or three statistics - hit points, armor class, and the damage that a sword or dagger might deal. Once we arrived back home in Spearfish, we only played D&D a few more times. Our Mom bought us (or found us) a used rule book, and helped us read through it and create characters. This is the now famous (among role playing circles at least) Holmes Basic rule book published in 1977. We were mostly absorbed by the book's equipment lists, perhaps because our supply of weapons and armor had been so limited on that car drive.
cover of the the Holmes edition by David Sutherland
As I said, we only played a few more sessions of D&D at that time. Our parents kept our lives full of activities: hiking in Spearfish Canyon or Lookout Mountain, exploring old gold mines and mills, riding bikes, skiing, soccer, a wide assortment of art projects (my Dad is an art professor), plus getting dragged to all manner of folk dance gatherings, foreign exchange student gatherings, art faculty meetings, and so on. Left to our own devices, our favorite activities were to explore vacant lots, throw rocks, play in the dirt, and hunt for insects, reptiles and frogs. With all of this helping us grow up big and strong, who needed D&D?
One memory that always floats back to me on a breeze is the sound of my Mom's voice calling us home to dinner; "Tor, Leif, Soren." Tor is my older brother by two years. Leif is my twin brother, older by six minutes. Being the youngest, my name was always last to be called. This is when we were youngsters living in Spearfish, meandering around our neighborhood as the evening came on. "Tor, Leif, Soren. Time to eat dinner." Mom's voice was loud and clear, but always came from far away. I love the sound of that call.
Also in Spearfish, everyday at 6:00pm the fire station would sound the alarm. You could hear it anywhere in town. We always knew when it was 6:00pm.
I hesitate to label myself a D&D nerd, or a role playing game fanatic. I hardly fit the stereotype. Yet that first encounter with D&D is still very memorable. It was a magical moment. As a six year old I listened, fully enthralled, as Eric described our characters making their way up a stony forest path, stumbling into a trap and set upon by goblins. Eric was ruthless as a dungeon master. Within minutes all of our characters lay dead on the hard, cold ground. His dad, Uncle Dick, made the oft-hand comment that Eric should take it easy on kids as young as us. I don't recall a stitch of who or what our characters were, but to a six year old, the scene Eric painted was better than any movie or storybook. There was that narrow path littered with rocks, a dark and cloud filled sky, a biting wind carrying dry leaves and scattered rain drops into our faces, and a forest of bare trees with the winter closing in.
Eric and his family lived in Flagstaff, Arizona. At the time we lived in Spearfish, South Dakota. On that long car drive home we played D&D for hours on end. We had no rule books or dice, just paper, a pencil, and our imaginations. We tore paper into little scraps and numbered them from 1 to 20. This served as our dice. We would take turns being the dungeon master, whose main job was to draw simple cave maps. There would be a few winding tunnels connecting several caverns, each of which had a monster living in it. Because my twin brother and I had an awful fear of spiders at the time, giant spiders featured prominently among our very small cast of monsters. One cavern would always hold a chest full of treasure, but our main goal seemed to be to kill the giant spider. The characters we created on that car ride were always simple fighter/warrior types. I guess they had two or three statistics - hit points, armor class, and the damage that a sword or dagger might deal. Once we arrived back home in Spearfish, we only played D&D a few more times. Our Mom bought us (or found us) a used rule book, and helped us read through it and create characters. This is the now famous (among role playing circles at least) Holmes Basic rule book published in 1977. We were mostly absorbed by the book's equipment lists, perhaps because our supply of weapons and armor had been so limited on that car drive.
As I said, we only played a few more sessions of D&D at that time. Our parents kept our lives full of activities: hiking in Spearfish Canyon or Lookout Mountain, exploring old gold mines and mills, riding bikes, skiing, soccer, a wide assortment of art projects (my Dad is an art professor), plus getting dragged to all manner of folk dance gatherings, foreign exchange student gatherings, art faculty meetings, and so on. Left to our own devices, our favorite activities were to explore vacant lots, throw rocks, play in the dirt, and hunt for insects, reptiles and frogs. With all of this helping us grow up big and strong, who needed D&D?
One memory that always floats back to me on a breeze is the sound of my Mom's voice calling us home to dinner; "Tor, Leif, Soren." Tor is my older brother by two years. Leif is my twin brother, older by six minutes. Being the youngest, my name was always last to be called. This is when we were youngsters living in Spearfish, meandering around our neighborhood as the evening came on. "Tor, Leif, Soren. Time to eat dinner." Mom's voice was loud and clear, but always came from far away. I love the sound of that call.
Also in Spearfish, everyday at 6:00pm the fire station would sound the alarm. You could hear it anywhere in town. We always knew when it was 6:00pm.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
The swallow takes flight
The American begins with a line from the gay English poet Oscar Wilde, and his story "The Happy Prince".
"I am waited for in Egypt," said the Swallow.
"I am waited for in Egypt," said the Swallow.
I begin here because this blog (oh how I hate the word, blog) is inspired by memories, and oddly enough this line is one of my more poignant ones. Presently I am bombarded every hour by by a hail storm of of such missiles, these memories, that I am soon to be buried alive. I asked a friend if this was normal. He said sure it is, that's what we call nostalgia. But this is not nostalgia; this is an ambush, and this is murder. My plan is to write my way out of this assault.
Oscar Wilde's tale of the the golden statue and the swallow that fell in love with him (Him) left a deep mark on my childhood, right up there with "Free to Be You and Me". I didn't read Wilde's story until I was in college. We watched film version of it in the 3rd or 4th grade. I connect "The Happy Prince" with memories because the film has such a nostalgic feel, its two main characters holding fast to their dreams even as winter and the harsh realities of their world close in around them. Around the time I saw this little film (it was a Friday afternoon, elementary school in Alpine, Texas) I made a vow to myself that would never grow up, remain a child forever. Well right there I went and buggered myself. It's no wonder that I so often find myself bombarded by memories.
The American writes of memories, deals a counter blow on the front lines of nostalgia. Yah, yah, yah, but what is the American really writing about here?
The American writes of memories, deals a counter blow on the front lines of nostalgia. Yah, yah, yah, but what is the American really writing about here?
- The highlights of my youth: role playing games and all related aspects.
- Autobiographic schlep.
- Thoughts on American culture and society.
- Growing old as a diplomat, the American abroad.
If I don't write about role playing games, I don't think I'll be able to hold my own interest for more than a post or two.
So, time for this swallow to fly. It is not the African variety with a propensity for transporting coconuts. This is the American bird taking wing.
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