The Fred Rogers Memorial Koan

What song does the blackbird sing in the dead of night?

For the answer, see this touching tribute to Mister Rogers.

See also my Feb. 26, 2003, entry, "Blackbirds, Bye-Bye," and the Feb. 25, 2003, entries, "For Mark Rothko," and "Song of Not-Self."

Blackbirds, Bye-Bye 

On this date in 1986, Robert Penn Warren was appointed the first Poet Laureate of the United States of America.

Two readings:

• The Rainbow Bird, by C. K. Latham
  

  (linked as "Into the Dark Woods" in last midnight's entry), and

  
  
• Grackles, Goodbye, by Robert Penn Warren.

See also my five log entries of October 26, 2002, and the preceding day.

He Ain't Heavy

Songwriter Tom Glazer, 88, died Friday, February 21, 2003.  From his New York Times obituary:

"Tom Glazer occasionally speculated about meeting St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and being asked what he accomplished in music."

Glazer:

From the official Department of Defense
Korean War Commemoration website:

Also from the New York Times:

"In 1957 he composed songs and background music for 'A Face in the Crowd,' a film directed by Elia Kazan."

"His brother, who spelled his name Sidney Glazier, died in December. He produced the 1968 movie version of 'The Producers.'"

St. Peter: 

Welcome to The Music Staff.

The Eight Revisited

"...search for thirty-three and three..."

-- The Black Queen in The Eight, by Katherine Neville, Ballantine Books, January 1989, page 140 

Samuel Beckett on Dante and Joyce:

"Another point of comparison is the preoccupation with the significance of numbers....  Thus the poem is divided into three Cantiche, each composed of 33 Canti...."

-- "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce," in James Joyce/Finnegans Wake: A Symposium (1929), New Directions paperback, 1972

Into the Dark Woods:  

"-- Nel mezzo del bloody cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai in..."
-- Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry, 1947, beginning of Chapter VI

Dante Alighieri Academy:

"'The Divine Comedy' celebrates Dante's journey of knowledge to God through life: hell, purgatory and paradise. Dante Alighieri Academy continues Dante's Christian philosophy of education...."

Chorus of the Damned:

I don’t know where it is we’re goin’
and God knows if I ever will,
but what a way this is to get there.
I got those archetypal, rubber-room,
astral-plane Moebius strip blues.
I got those in-and-out, round-about,
which way’s out Moebius strip blues.

© 1997 by C.K. Latham

Added March 3, 2003, 6:00 AM:

For a less confused song, click this Glasgow site.

For Mark Rothko

Plagued in life by depression -- what Styron, quoting Milton, called "darkness visible" -- Rothko took his own life on this date in 1970.  As a sequel to the previous note, "Song of Not-Self," here are the more cheerful thoughts of the song "Time's a Round," the first of Shiva Dancing: The Rothko Chapel Songs, by C. K. Latham.  See also my comment on the previous entry (7:59 PM).

Time’s a round, time’s a round,
A circle, you see, a circle to be.

— C. K. Latham

10/23/02

Song of Not-Self

A critic on the abstract expressionists:

"...they painted that reality -- that song of self -- with a passion, bravura, and decisiveness unequaled in modern art."

Painter Mark Rothko:

"I don't express myself in painting. 
 I express my not-self."

On this day in 1957, Buddy Holly and his group recorded the hit version of "That'll Be the Day."

On this day in 1970, painter Mark Rothko committed suicide in his New York City studio.

On February 27, 1971, the Rothko Chapel was formally dedicated in Houston, Texas.

On May 26, 1971, Don McLean recorded "American Pie."

Rothko was apparently an alcoholic; whether he spent his last day enacting McLean's lyrics I do not know.

Rothko is said to have written that

"The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer. As examples of such obstacles, I give (among others) memory, history or geometry, which are swamps of generalization from which one might pull out parodies of ideas (which are ghosts) but never an idea in itself. To achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood."

-- Mark Rothko, The Tiger's Eye, 1, no. 9 (October 1949), p. 114

Whether Holly's concept "the day that I die" is a mere parody of an idea or "an idea in itself," the reader may judge.  The reader may also judge the wisdom of building a chapel to illustrate the clarity of thought processes such as Rothko's in 1949.  I personally feel that someone who can call geometry a "swamp" may not be the best guide to religious meditation.

For another view, see this essay by Erik Anderson Reece.

Dustin in Wonderland

A review of last night's Grammy awards:

"...the overall mood was a bit subdued (was deadpan host Dustin Hoffman reprising his "Rain Man" role?)...."

Actually, no, it was Sam Peckinpah's "Straw Dogs." But mistaking a mathematician for an autistic person is a natural error.

Moulins Rouges

Today is the birthday of composer Michel Legrand ("The Windmills of Your Mind") and of philologist Wilhelm Grimm (Grimms' Fairy Tales).

See the following past entries:

October 6, 2002: "Twenty-first Century Fox"

November 7, 2002: "Endgame"

November 8, 2002: "Religious Symbolism at Princeton"

January 5, 2003: "Whirligig"

January 5, 2003: "Culinary Theology"

January 6, 2003: "Dead Poet in the City of Angels"

January 31, 2003: "Irish Fourplay"

February 1, 2003; "Time and Eternity"

February 5, 2003: "Release Date"

Grammy Night

Today's musical birthday: bassist Steven Priest of Sweet. 

Today's back-to-the-future trip:  See the article "Sweet Tunes...." on Chuck Berry at the top of today's New York Times website.

"Her wallet's filled with pictures,
She gets 'em one by one."

— "Sweet Little Sixteen," by Chuck Berry
(Chess Records, January 1958)

Click on the above for the context.

"Are you ready, Steve? Aha....

And the girl in the corner is ev'ryone's mourner.
She could kill you with a wink of her eye."

— "Ballroom Blitz," by Sweet

Straw Dogs

See also
Quotations for
Chairman George