Friday Funtime: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Fin.

Cat Stevens, "Morning Has Broken"

Pop Argot turns the show over to his friend Dave* today: after his terrific piece last fall on Todd Rundgren's "Hello, It's Me," he's back with another contemplative early '70s entry.

The Saturday before Palm Sunday, there were articles in the New York Times talking about something I had never heard of before: Birkat Hachama, a Jewish blessing recited once every 28 years, at dawn, to celebrate the sun's return to its original position on the morning of creation.

This sounded too cool to pass up, so on April 28th, I went down to the parking lot behind our triple-decker at precisely 6:17, one minute before dawn. The sky was half-blue, half-filled with a very dark, advancing cloud bank, but for the moment one could clearly see the sun beginning to peek out from behind the hills of Worcester. I waited for it to get high enough to discern the top of the solar disc, and then chanted:

"Blessed are you, LORD our God, King of the Universe, who makes the works of creation."

That only took a moment. As you can see in the above Wikipedia article, the blessing is usually said as part of a small liturgy. The occasion certainly seemed to demand more. I thought for a second, then added the Gloria Patri: "As it was in the beginning/ Is now and ever shall be." And then, as the dawning sun rose at the precise angle it did over Eden, I sang:

Morning has broken, like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
Praise for the singing, praise for the morning
Praise for the springing fresh from the Word

I think most people think of "Morning Has Broken" as a Cat Stevens song, but fact is, it was written in 1931 as a hymn. Stevens, who even before his conversion to Islam had a religious streak a mile thick, heard it and loved it enough to record and release as a single (which subsequently went to #6 this month in 1972).

I know it as a child from church, from singing in pews on warm spring Sundays, when the windows would be open and the sounds of the world would join our singing. During my childhood, nature seemed to me to be a grace-ful thing. Though my family were never biblical literalists, there was nonetheless a very strong sense in our house that God had created the trees, the water and the animals and that He loved them. I found comfort in nature. Compared to a human world that seemed cruel to me, forests and rivers were always welcoming and peaceful. I loved the bleakness of snow, the soft fall of rain, the smells of a spring thaw, the crunch of autumn leaves. The only interruption to this was the work of man, destroying and polluting, sinning.

But as I got older and learned more about biology, certain facts kept sticking themselves uncomfortably into this picture. I found the unspoiled natural landscape I thought was so tranquil was actually a constant battlefield. Everything is trying to eat or avoid being eaten. The trees and grasses grow as tall as they can to secure their source of sunlight and avoid being shut out by those larger than them. Predators kill mercilessly - indeed, there is no room for mercy, since forgoing prey would just ensure the predator's own death. Whatever is left of the dead is eaten by a thousand hangers-on. All that snow and rain looks much prettier from behind the walls of the warm house, a vantage point no wild animal has. Wasps place spiders into comas so their young can eat the spiders alive. Dolphins and ducks rape. The penis of the bedbug is like a syringe, and its insertion like stabbing. Parasites insert themselves wherever they can find an opening, and will fill up a weak creature with as many of their own as can fit. And when humans blast their way into nature, it is not due to any moral evil but simply from the same evolved urges that every organism unwittingly obeys.

God is nowhere to be found in any of this. There is neither need nor want of Him. The world is powered by eating, fighting and fucking, a massive ball of pain rolling from nothing to nothing.

Is this true? I asked as a sun rose. I stood over a small lake filled with fish and insects, home to ducks, gulls, swans and a great blue heron, bottomed and bordered by trees, bamboo and weeds, lit by the new sun. I love it. Is there any room for Creation here? I have staked my soul on the idea that among all the struggle, God is guiding, and that the turbulent nature and turbulent man will someday be renewed, put again as they were intended, magnificent and peaceful. On that day the lion shall lie down with the lamb, the lion shall eat grass (or not even grass, for the grass will be a friend as well). I long for that day. Until then, under the sun of the first day, I sang:

Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning
Born of the one light, Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise every morning
God's recreation of the new day.

Friday Funtime: Songs for Mama

In celebration of mothers everywhere, the most giving of people, here are a few gifts of song - with thanks to the 10@10ers and DJs who provided most of these ideas. (The Intruders get it wrong, though: "You only get one, you only get one" no longer applies in an era of blended families and rising GLBT visibility.) Pop Argot hopes his mom and all of you mothers reading this blog have a wonderful day.

1. The Intruders, "I'll Always Love My Mama" (The L-O-N-G version!)
2. Boyz II Men, "A Song for Mama"
3. Junior, "Mama Used to Say"
4. The Shirelles, "Mama Said"
5. Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried"
6. John Lennon, "Mother"
7. The Beatles, "Lady Madonna"
8. Three Dog Night, "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)"
9. Jimmy Castor Bunch, "Hey Leroy, Your Mama's Calling You"
10. will.i.am, "I Got It From My Mama"

PS: I so seriously wanted to post the Spinners' "Sadie," but the No Fun Police have taken it off YouTube. Seek it out, though, if only to hear Phillippe Wynne's bizarre inflections on "Early on Sunday morning / breakfast was on the table."

Hoodoo Gurus, "What's My Scene?"

I should be doing the dance of joy in response to New England's gay-marriage surge, I suppose. It is a wonderful and overdue development.

Instead I'm still seething that that vacuous twat Carrie Prejean is still on about the dangers of Teh Gays getting Teh Marriage (in her inimitable beauty-pageant-speak): "Unless we bring men and women together, children will not have mothers and fathers." Um, last I checked, men and women were finding each other and getting together just fine. And try telling my gay and lesbian friends who are raising kids - and I have several - that their children do not have mothers and fathers.

And I'm still seething at North Carolina Representative Virginia Foxx for referring to the perception that a hate crime was committed in the murder of Matthew Shepard as a "hoax" - although she has since apologized to Matthew's mother Judy and to the nation at large. I'm also still seething at the American Family Association for its response to a proposed hate-crimes law inspired by Shepard's senseless death 11 years ago: that it would "give legally protected status to pedophiles." It's hard to believe that people take the likes of the AFA seriously - but they do.

Do I really need to seethe so much when the lies of the right are being exposed for what they are? I'm afraid I do. I'm a perfectionist and an idealist, and thus, given the state of man, a cynic; and I'd like my freedom while I'm still young enough to use it. So I ask, in the words of Hoodoo Gurus' delightful "What's My Scene?": "And another thing I've been wondering lately: Am I crazy to believe in ideals?"

Tom Robinson, "Glad to Be Gay"

"You are very angry today!" a friend recently chided me on my Facebook page. I'd posted a couple of expletive-laden comments, and she was a bit concerned. Well, when the CEO of America's largest grocery retailer is revealed to have been a petition signer for the Arkansas initiative passed in November that prohibits unmarried couples - that is, gay couples - from adopting or foster-raising kids; and when a somewhat randomly chosen "people's" representative with a pretty big fan base blithely tells a publication he won't allow his "queer" friends to go near his kids; well, yeah, I get a little angry.

I get a lot angry, in fact. Joe the Fake Plumber, sit your ass down and give up this reality-TV flying carpet you've been riding on the past few months. You seem like an intelligent enough guy; please be intelligent enough to know when you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You've managed to live 35 years not knowing the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia. That's not acceptable. How dare you call these people, whom you consider less trustworthy and less moral and less human than you, how DARE you call them your "friends." You cannot be a friend to a person you think so little of.

Why do I give a shit what you think, Joe the Fake Plumber? Because there are a lot of people in America like you. (That's why you're famous, innit?) They have been told by their parents and their churches and their communities a lot of horrible things about homosexuality. A lot of lies. About how we act, what we believe, what dangers we present, how much of a man or woman we are, how much of a human we are. They're passing these lies down to their kids. Your kids. My kids. OUR kids. And look how some of these kids are taking the lessons we're giving them: Charles M. Blow, "Two Little Boys."

Did you see that, Joe? Kids 11 years old killing themselves because their classmates have been taught that gay is bad and the best way to crush a kid is to call him gay. Blow says it well: "We, as a society, should be ashamed. The bodies of these children lie at our feet. The toxic intolerance of homophobic adults has spilled over into the minds of pre-sexual children, placing undue pressure on the frailest of shoulders. This pressure is particularly acute among young boys who are forced to conform to a perilously narrow concept of masculinity. Or else."

They're 11, Joe. The sins of the fathers are the sins of the sons already, because people like you are afraid of what is different.

And people like you do not fully understand what it means for a person to love a person. You continue to fight against our rights to legally wed and raise children and be full and equal partners and look after each other in our waning years. You continue to form organizations with absurd names like the National Organization for Marriage and make ominous-thundercloud warnings that "gay marriage has consequences." You continue to claim, as John Feenery did in this CNN.com Op-Ed, that gay marriage is "a victory for family values in a strange way." (Emphasis mine.)

Fuck that. This is for all y'alls: Tom Robinson, "Glad to Be Gay."

PS: Hope no one minds the non-observation of Cinco de Mayo. I have nothing musically to offer the day except the War song of that name, and that ain't even up on YouTube.

Procol Harum, "Repent Walpurgis"

A guy I knew in college recently resurfaced on Facebook - writing from Iceland, of all places - offering as a status update his celebration of Walpurgis and Volbriöö. I'd never heard of either holiday and was grateful for the impromptu lesson. Volbriöö is an Estonian springtime-arrival fete, while the celebration of Walpurgisnacht takes place every year on April 30 or May 1 and involves setting bonfires to cast off dead spirits.

I'm taken with that notion of "off with the old, in with the new," with a ritual to mark the division. Moreso, I'm taken with a song that the day spawned: Procol Harum, best known to '60s pop fans as the creators of "A Whiter Shade of Pale," recorded the instrumental "Repent Walpurgis" in 1967. (The live performance I've linked to is from '71.) I have no idea what Procol Harum are asking repentance for with the title; but then, after the vestal virgins of "Pale" and the ill-fitting clothes of "Homburg," I'm not about to start expecting the rational and literal now. "Repent Walpurgis" is a powerful bit of prog-rock - a more morbid "Funeral for a Friend," in a way - and stands right up there with "Pale," "Conquistador," and the other minor-key, depressing entries in the Procol Harum catalog.

Friday Funtime: First of May

It's International Workers' Day, but yours truly was unfortunately not at all laborious today and couldn't pull together the May Day set of celebrations of workers that he'd intended to post today. So make do with Dylan's ever relevant take on "Maggie's Farm," and enjoy this forgotten minor hit from the Bee Gees' early days. I'll try to be more on top of my game next week.

L&Gs, "First of May." (That's a live clip; here's the full studio version.)

(PS: "The apple tree / That grew for you and me" may be among the decade's 10 worst lines.)