sherbet orange

One assumes this is how the iPad sees us.

Kraftwerk, The Man-Machine

Atrociously obvious choice for the first thing to listen to on my little white and sherbet orange window on the infinite rainbow of Potential, I know, but there it is. I wrote a little on it, played a lot on it, pulled it out of youth's eager grip and kept going oh dude, look at this... to no one listening, like I just discovered the Internet hiding among the couch cushions.


I wish all the mobile sites would include embed controls but maybe that's the only thing keeping me from going full Neuromancer.

remaining glow

Check out the fallen Cthulhu tree at a dead end in the neighborhood.

Chemrocket, Gr(u)Ve Assas(Sin)
Guitar Wolf, UFO Romantics
H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"
The Help, Keep the Beat
Desmond Dekkar, Black and Dekkar
Marcia Griffiths, Dreamland

The address of Inspector John Legrasse, one of the subjects interviewed in "The Call of Cthulhu" about sightings of He Who Waits, is 121 Bienville St. New Orleans, LA, right down there:


View Larger Map

right at those river levees so prominent in the news this weekend and curiously near the aquarium. Make you wonder what really lurks at the bottom of that giant sting ray tank. Or the bottom of anything.

The weekend was jubilant (the pool opened!) tainted with guilty dread (the Morganza spillway opened!) in that a whole region is being flooded and likely irrevocably altered. The river bars in Henderson get a lot of play in my book; some of the people I spoke to are likely packing all they can onto borrowed trucks so that the levees in my city and others downriver can be protected. I know life is ebb and flow and cause and effect and pressure and resistance and pushing against and giving way but man, metaphors seem pretty weak when the reality possesses such a grand and devastating scale. Here's hoping drunk women can soon again dance on the bar on Sunday afternoons at Angelle's Whiskey River Landing while airboats rest on trailers in the parking lot as party barges full of sunburned weekenders dock up to continue their denial that the work week is coming.


The porch at Angelle's circa fall 2008, when this story was written. My friend Terry, the anniversary of whose passing was feted in proper style over the weekend, came along on this one. It was right before he started to get sick, maybe one of the last adventures we went on. Terry took some better photos than I did, but who knows where they are now.

So yeah, the weekend was light with heaviness, warm shadows cast from the departed's remaining glow (I missed my friend Jeanne's wake) or maybe the world just wet all around and we just have to give way to the waters when they come. See? Weak.


Marcia Griffiths, "Tell Me Now"

Finding Hitler's Horse (unabridged)

(x-posted on Facebook)

To honor my dear friend Terry Kennedy who left us a year ago today, here is the unabridged version of the "Finding Hitler's Horse" story that he and I wrote for the Oct. 2008 issue of Country Roads Magazine. The magazine had to cut it for size and reign it for focus, so I dug up our original that goes in all directions as Terry was wont to do.

Finding Hitler’s Horse
Ghost stories, Champion horses and the nature of mystery on Louisiana’s German Coast
by Alex V. Cook and Terry Kennedy.

I believe the truth is fundamentally elusive. It is a slippery thing that sits unnoticed right in front of you, begging to be lassoed, all while your rope gets caught on the facts. The difference between the facts and the truth is a metaphysical question. Fortunately, Louisiana is a deeply metaphysical place and I have found metaphysical people like Terry Kennedy with which to explore it. A couple months ago during one of our many conversations about the greater weirdness of Louisiana, he mentioned, “You know, one of these days, we should go out and visit the grave of Hitler’s horse and see what comes of it.”

The wine had been flowing during that conversation and I wasn’t sure what Terry was talking about, but a quick web search revealed that Nordlicht, a racehorse that once belonged to Adolph Hitler was indeed buried in St. Rose, LA, at La Branche, a plantation just down River Road from Destrahan. The Pedigree Online Throuroughbred Database shows that Nordlight won both the Osterreicheisches (Austrian) and Deutches (German) Derbies in 1944.[i] It does not require a stretch of the imagination to why thoroughbred horses were of particular interest to the Nazis, whose name is synonymous with the horrific potential of genetic engineering, so this prize winning horse belonging to Hitler at the peak of the Nazi regime was a symbol of great significance. RoadsideAmerica.com further offers this about Nordlicht:

Undefeated, he was named horse of the year in 1944 and had his image placed on a German postage stamp. [ii]

At the end of World War II, Nordlicht (“northern light”) was claimed as a prize of war by the US Army, and purchased for stud by C. Walter Mattingly, a surgeon and horse breeder. Mattingly brought Nordlicht to La Branche Plantation in 1948, where he spent the next two decades siring horses right there on what is known as Louisiana’s German Coast. Further research in the Pedigree Online database revealed that Visionaire, running 24-to-1 odds in the 2008 Kentucky Derby, was a direct descendant of Nordlicht, so we decided Derby Day was the day to go.

Searching for metaphysical truth involves lining up one’s connections, however tenuous, in hopes that the greater picture reveals itself. So we set up as many connections in our favor as possible. We took off in Terry’s 1980 Mercedes 450 SLC with a copy of Richard Strauss’ opera Salome to listen to. The significance of Salome is that its 1906 premier in Graz – the salacious subject matter was too racy for Vienna – saw an audience of eager idealists. According to Alex Ross in The New Yorker:

Strauss took particular note of the crowd’s demographics; he mentioned, in a letter to his wife, Pauline, the “young people from Vienna, with only the vocal score as hand luggage.” Strange to say, one of them was an Austrian teenager named Adolf Hitler, who had just seen Mahler conduct Tristan und Isolde in Vienna.[iii]

Terry: I love Strauss, he really is one of the best.
Alex: He cuts through the middle of all that music that came before him. Like coming after the Romantics, and the classicists – he was left to figure out what to do with all this.
Terry: And he’ll take a Schoenberg atonal note in the middle of some perfect tonality, and make it beautiful
Alex: He’s a real climatic composer, like it’s all in dense layers of atmosphere forming into clouds
Terry: And all those currents run into each other, starting and stopping all the time, but it makes sense. It’s beautiful music.
Terry: (after listening for a while) You think drugs are behind this music? I’m guessing cocaine.
Alex: Maybe. There is a touch of syphilitic madness to this music. It’s paranoid music, always looking over its shoulder.

Strauss had good reason to be worried. He was appointed president of the Reichsmusikkammer, the State Music Bureau, by Joseph Goebbels without his consent in 1933. Strauss composed the Olympische Hymne for the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin. The significance of the 1936 games is that it was a showcase for Hitler to demonstrate the superiority of the Aryan race, a notion undermined by the four gold medals won by black American athlete Jesse Owens. The other popular image of Jesse Owens is his publicity stunts later in life, defeating racehorses in a sprint. When on the metaphysical trail, coming full circle is the first clue that you are onto something.

Much like dominoes, our coincidences started to tumble in on each other and collapse in a heap. Terry’s Mercedes started to sputter at the Sorrento exit on I-10, leading to the Auto Zone and some shade tree maintenance. “I have a lot of theories on what’s wrong with this car. I’ll keep pulling them out as I need them.” Terry said. While replacing the distributor cap, and subsequently eliminating that from the solution column, we decided that maybe we were trying too hard to make the connections line up. We limped back to his house on Airline, just in time to catch the 6 pm run of the Kentucky Derby on the radio. Visionaire got a cursory mention in the opening lineup, but was lost in the blur of horses. Even the Derby itself succumbed to defeat that day with second place horse Eight Belles breaking both front ankles and needing to be euthanized while sprinting down after the wire.

The following weekend, we set out in my Honda, spreading our metaphysical reliance across the Axis. We were contemplating the meaning of “La Branche,” whether it referred to genealogy, lineage and through that, the genetic purity that is central to both the Nazis and racehorses as we pulled onto the gravel road of the former dependency house or garconiere, a separate building used to house the male children of the plantation. Terry found the marker for Nordlicht’s grave in short order, under a crepe myrtle, marked with a stone and brass plaque

NORDLICHT 1941-1968
DOUBLE DERBY WINNER
AND CLASSIC SIRE

The visitors’ office was closed and the doors to last significant original building on the grounds, the garconiere was were padlocked. Parked outside it was a gorgeous carriage. “I wonder if Nordlicht ever pulled this beauty around, “ Terry remarked as he snapped some photos. We were about to walk back and head home, when up drove Sal Lentini, former police chief, plantation enthusiast and veteran of the invasion at Normandy.

Sal explains that previous owners were named Zweig, meaning “branch” in German and they gave the place the French name, La Branche. “I got this place because of my daughter.

“It’s funny. One day I took her up here because I’d been trying to get the place from Dr. Mattingly. I come up to talk to him, I knew him and his wife good, she was a doctor too. I told them, ‘One day, you are gonna sell me this place.’ I took my daughter up here several years after that, and we walked up to the gate. A horse walked up to the gate with an eyeball hanging out. My daughter went berserk, she cried and everything else. She was so upset she didn’t say a damn word to me, my own daughter. She’s got more nerve than Carters’ got liver pills.

“You know she called Dr. Mattingly, and went to see him and fussed him up and down about that horse. Dr. D. Mattingly called me and said, “Sal, I’m not going to sell you the place. I know who I’m going to sell it to – your daughter.”

Sal pointed to the plantation’s original carriage lane of oaks, long feral, on the edge of his property “See those oak trees over there? Right here under those trees, I remember people out there at night, digging for gold, looking for where Jean Lafite hid some of his treasure.”

“See that big pecan tree back there? It is 24-feet in circumference. A county agent came here to measure it, and they found a little box down in the roots of that tree. It’s gotta be a casket. Somebody that used to live on the plantation used to come by here , and had a little sister that died, and back then they buried them on the grounds."

On our way to the garconiere, Sal pointed out a ring of oak trees. “There was a Houmas Indian chief that was buried out here. You ever heard of tree huggers? The tree huggers would come out, and have come out many times. “ Later, I could find no reference to tree-hugging or tree ceremonies particular to the Houmas tribe. It seems our entire metaphysical mission, chasing a horse to its grave, was trumped by real history.

“That’s why I like plantations, they have so much history to them. “ Sal found the leys to the garconiere and took us into the lovingly decorated building. Period antiques he had collected over the years glowed against the robin’s egg blue walls. In the last room he took us through, we were met by a magnificent burled walnut bed whose origins Sal coyly guarded.

Sal: I’m not going to tell you who this bed used to belong to.
Terry: it looks like one of Huey Long’s beds
Sal: You are close. It’s a real coincidence on how it got here. You wouldn’t believe it.
Alex: OK, so how’d it get here?
Sal: (laughing) Oh, people would get the wrong impression. I won’t say. If that bed could talk… lots of people would take a picture with it, I know that.
Alex: Come on, whose bed is this?
Sal: (laughs again) Sorry, I’ve never told and I can’t say now.
Terry: That’s alright, I like a mystery better than knowing. It’s a beautiful bed.

[i] Pedigree Online Thoroughbred Database, http://www.pedigreequery.com/index.php?h=nordlicht
[ii] Roadside America, http://www.roadsideamerica.com/pet/nordlicht.html
[iii] Ross, Alex, “The Last Emperor: Richard Strauss”, New Yorker, Dec. 20, 1999

Hail Rainbow Cthulhu!

Hail Rainbow Cthulhu!

H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" (PDF from Feedbooks)
Various Artists, The East Village Other's Electronic Newspaper (via ROOT BLOG)
Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
Mayer Hawthorne, Impressions (free covers EP, full breakdown at Blurt)

It was not a tough sell to get my daughter into Cthulhu (what's not too love? Her rendering rendered even more psychedelic by the iPhone Photoshop app) and even after reading the ponderous 1920's patter of part I of the story, she's still anxious to get to the madness-inducing apocalyptic wrath of He Who Waits. That's my girl!

The East Village Other produced, among other things, this "electronic newspaper" from 1966, collaged and assembled by ESP-Disk analyzing the media spectacle that was Luci Johnson's wedding. It's been on my hunt list for years and there it pops up to the surface of my feeder like noxious gas bubbles exhaled from the Ancient Ones. Thanks to ROOT BLOG for putting this forth.

What I want to know is, where is mashup culture in the arena of social protest? Twenty years ago, hip-hop applied the collage strategies of the 60's to DJ barrages (think how Terminator X was often as potent a voice on Fear of a Black Planet as was Chuck and Flav) With the broadside, wheatpaste nature of social media, you'd think the modern dub reorganizers would be all over it, or maybe they are and I am too hopelessly square to be aware. If that's the case, hip me to it. As this blog can attest, I'll listen to anything once.

Speaking of collages and noxious gas bubbles, would you listen to this blog if it were condensed weekly into a radio show and/or podcast? We've been approached.

Chanting, even!

The flag burning on the campus parade grounds today got people moderately riled up. Chanting, even!

George Adams, Hand to Hand
Chick Corea, Three Quartets
Anthony Braxton, The Complete Anthony Braxton 1971, Vol. 1
Anthony Braxton, Six Compositions (GTM) 2001
Roberto Bolaño, The Return

Media: Blues Fest recap, Vintage Vinyl, Leaving, and the Diane Lanes in this week's Record Crate blog for 225.

I knew that everything was all right, and I could go. That everything was wrong, and I could go. That everything was sorrow, and I could go.
Robert Bolaño, "Joanna Silvestri"

I like how it works here and how it doesn't quite work

1. I like this picture of my daughter vs. the Mississippi at near flood stage, downtown Baton Rouge. The big paper clip thing is a riverboat landing dock and all the boarding ramps that riverboat travelers would normally use are now twenty feet under the muddy water.

Don Cherry, Old and New Dreams
Muhal Richard Abrams, Sound Dance

2. I like how Steve Wilkerson's river essay-as-Facebook-note is making the rounds. Journalism-wise, something there too is cresting. I know Steve, but I forget how, which is the nature of social media or mediated society or whatever. I like how that works.
3. I like how this page explains the deal with the Mississippi/Red/Atchafalaya/Old River confluences utilizing (basically) bar napkin sketches. (hat tip to Lucius Fontenot). I like hubris and how Captain Shreve was all, well, let's solve this traffic problem by digging a new river.  I like how we tip hats. I like how, despite all the intellectual property fears, the Internet is a credit-where-credit-is-due kind of marketplace of ideas, and how in the real world, who-did-what is of little consequence now. I like how we never really learn the lessons of credit.
   
   
4. I drove across the Morganza Spillway/Old River Control Facility late at night a while back. It is eerie, alien country out there, at least at 1 AM it is.
   
   View Larger Map
   I like how the river control complex feels like one of those vast abandoned Russian sites you see on the Internet or the X-Files, something built in close but forgotten antiquity to dangerously harvest nuclear power with nothing but vastness to protect the rest of the world from what's going on there.  I like how the relationship civilization has with nature is tense in ways that we can't even comprehend because it is mediated through trappings/milestones/yokes of civilization, and yet those civilized means are the only means by which we can come to grips with the vastness of it. I like how we always give up the chase before we completely come to grips with it (anything), because we have to. Our hands are only so big and can only grip so much. I like how Google Maps lets you get the embedded map just right before you post it.
5. I like how the whiff of impending, wet disaster leads one to the high-n-dry sanctity of lofty thinking, sweeping that nasty water away with sweeping judgments. I like the tectonic interplay of the HTML ordered list with breaks. I like how it works here and how it doesn't quite work right when the post gets cast out through an RSS feed. I like to think there is some kind of poetry in that. I like thinking everything is poetry. Or is at least fuel for poetry's fire. I like how flawed that thinking is and how we really never learn anything.

core sample

Spied at Kerry Beary's The Atomic Pop Shop & Vintage Vinyl - adorable new record store on Gov't Street here in Mid-City Baton Rouge. The above pictured core sample of their collection might perfectly sustain me.

Roberto Bolaño, The Return
TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Lights
Damien Youth, The Citizen (hat tip to Badger Minor)
Angels of Light, How I Loved You
Current 93, Honeysuckle Aeons
Leaving, Ghost House
Ultimate Spinach, Behold & See
The Byrds, Preflyte
Yusef Islam, Roadsinger


TV on the Radio, "Second Song"


Angels of Light, "Untitled Love Song"


Ultimate Spinach, "Jazz Thing"