Maurizio Brancaleoni's blog. Reviews, interviews, translations and haiku. Bilingual. Un blog di Maurizio Brancaleoni. Recensioni, interviste, traduzioni e haiku. Bilingue.
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*Pubblicato su 'Testo a fronte', vol. 63, pp.339-347*
Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938)
nasce ad Asheville, North Carolina. Mentre studia drammaturgia ad Harvard
scrive per il teatro, ma il successo arriva con il romanzo autobiografico Look
Homeward, Angel (1929), seguito da Of Time and the River (1935)
e dai postumi The Web and the Rock (1939) e You Can’t
Go Home Again (1940). Passage to England: A Selection,
pubblicato solo nel 1998 senza modifiche significative, è forse l’esempio più
autentico di una scrittura genuinamente wolfiana. La cronaca vera ma
soprattutto fantastica di un viaggio per mare da New York a Tilbury fa da
cornice a frammenti saggistici e inserti autobiografici. Proprio uno degli inserti secondari, la “storia dell’uomo troppo alto”, palesemente ispirata alle proprie vicissitudini, è il resoconto onesto e poetico delle difficoltà che Wolfe poteva incontrare nella vita di tutti i giorni per via della sua altezza spropositata (6 piedi e 6 pollici, ossia 1,98 m) e di come quelle problematiche dovevano riflettersi in un senso di lontananza ed estraneità dal mondo.
" Mi sono dimenticato di dire che su questa nave c’è anche un giovane che è troppo alto. Lo avevo visto passeggiare in coperta con falcate da un metro; ogni tanto degli anziani signori lo fermavano e nel tono più gentile che si possa immaginare, gli dicevano: “Ragazzo mio, ma quanto sei alto?”, al che lui borbottava qualche risposta incomprensibile e con rabbia si allontanava in tutta fretta... "
Le Note Azzurre, forse l’opera più rappresentativa dello scapigliato Carlo Dossi, sono da sempre al centro
dell’attenzione di studiosi e appassionati. Alcuni appunti, tuttavia, sono stati studiati poco o nulla: si tratta di
frammenti che si concentrano su questioni e ossessioni estremamente moderne, come per esempio l’impatto
della tecnologia sulla società e appaiono ancora oggi futuristici, quasi fantascientifici. In questa sede si vuole
individuare ed esaminare queste note neglette nel tentativo di offrire una panoramica inedita di un Dossi
anticipatore di tendenze e fenomeni sociali oggi decisivi.
The Note Azzurre (Blue Notes), arguably the most representative work of the Scapigliato Carlo Dossi, have always
been the focus of attention of scholars and enthusiasts. A few notes, however, have been studied little or not at
all: these fragments revolve around extremely modern matters and obsessions, such as the impact of technology
on society, and sound futuristic, almost science-fictional, even today. The purpose of this essay is to identify and
investigate these neglected notes in order to provide an unprecedented overview of Dossi as a pioneer of social
trends and issues which are pivotal today.
I couldn't be prouder that my parody/pastiche/prophecy
"Buzzard and Sky Reconsidered, or the Day of the Last Ominous Omelette"
has been included together with a related illustration by yours truly in 'A Surrealist Almanac - 2020' edited by Tim White. ssp
Here's a brief extract:
[...] One evening, sitting at my table weak and weary, I had
the vision of a man with a breaded chicken steak in his hand, riflewise. His
failure to agitate the phlegmatic conundrum of my emotional state gradually
drove me into a trance-like stateliness. I was forever plummeting towards and
never reaching vast pastures of scrambled eggs. The girl next door, evidently
with chickenpox, smirkingly struck her favourite pose on the bend of my elbow [...]
Thanks
for granting me this interview! First of all, I would like to ask you about the
beginning of your path as a musician. How and when did you start singing and
making music? What instrument(s) did you first pick up?
Hello Maurizio. Thank you for this opportunity.
I remember when I found you on Last.fm over a decade ago. We had a lot of fun
on there. There were a lot of independent musicians on there.
I started learning piano as a kid. I always sang
because my mother always sang and came from a very musical family. I used to
cringe when she would sing loudly in the grocery store, but now I am so glad
she did it. We also camped a lot in the 60s and 70s with family friends and she
and her friends played guitar and sang around the campfire, so did all the
kids. They sang a lot of folk back then, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, etc. My mother’s
mother, my grandmother was a great musician, a pianist. She went to Indiana
University at age 16. Her father actually had died in the pandemic in 1918 being
a doctor in WW1. He died in France while caring for others. Her mother took in
boarders in Bloomington. They lived across the street from Hoagy Carmichael and
they were family friends. My grandma was a few grades behind him. You know, he
wrote some great songs. Well, it was the Depression and my grandma could not
afford the rehearsal fees for music school. So she went into English and
French. Later she taught French and English. She did sit in for some bands
during her time there. It has always been a great music school.
I should have stayed with piano because I could
actually read music for piano. Many years later when I took up guitar, I never
really learned to play well. It was mostly for putting songs together. My
friend John Munoz actually gave me my first guitar and gave me a little lesson
on basic chords so I could learn to put songs together. I had all these songs
in my head and in previous bands would have to sing them out while others put
them together with instruments.
Before all that, when I was a teen, I was in a
lot of musical theater plays. It was a group called the Southern Arizona Light
Opera Company. I was a late grower and often played people’s kid sisters
and such. I was learning a lot of dance then and took voice lessons from a
great teacher, Rosemary Henderson. She taught me operatic singing but also jazz
and blues. She really wanted me to go into music. I almost did go to Indiana
university for music, but ended up at UCLA for theater. Then a very tragic
event happened while I was there in Los Angeles. I won’t go into it but I
dropped out a while and lived in Venice Beach there. There I was in a band,
Cheshire Moon. The main musician was Kevin Maxwell but he had been changing his
name so many times that I am not sure what his name is now. He was a gifted
songwriter and he would help write out songs I had in my head. This was when I
was 19 or so.
Then I went back to school in Arizona in
Creative Writing. Around then was when my friend gave me the guitar. I started
to write some songs.
Later on in my 20s, early 90s, I joined Barely
Bipedal. It was a good time for independent musicians putting out cassette
tapes. They would get around. I still could not play guitar very well. I just
liked to put songs together. But also there were many songwriters in Barely
Bipedal and we sang in multiple harmonies. I heavily relied on other musicians
to fill out my own songs, in Barely Bipedal, and later Project Bluebird. People
were kind about it. I was primarily a vocalist but had these songs in my head. I
also used to be in a drum group. We used to play in the park and at street
fairs. For a time I also helped someone make ceramic drums. They have a very
nice sound.
Could
you tell us a bit about Barely Bipedal? Who were the members and how did you fall
in with them?
Barely Bipedal was originally Jon Mount and
James Jordan. They both had come out of punk bands and then were playing folk,
country and gospel with an experimental edge. Then I ran into Jon. I had been
away awhile. He and I knew each other back in grade school. He asked me to come
sing with them. Then others joined, Eric Baldoni, Eric Royer, Kira Geddes, and
a guy named Pig Boy. We did a lot of recordings on cassette tapes which were
distributed through Toxic Ranch Records. We played in laundry mats, soup
kitchens, fundraisers, peace fairs and a lot of backyard punk shows. There is a
recent recording now on Bandcamp with James and Jon, the original Barely
Bipedal actually [https://compactdiscrecords.bandcamp.com/album/all-summer-been-lightnin].
I would also like
to ask you about your collaborative project ‘Project Bluebird/Earth Folk’. It’s
always good to see people working together and joining their talents to create
something really authentic. How and when did the project start and how did it
develop along the years? Why did you originally choose to call it ‘Project
Bluebird’?
Project Bluebird partially started out on that
old site StumbleUpon. In the early years it was a great site, a good global
community. We felt a sense of bringing down the borders, at least
intellectually, for a little while there. And the algorithms were at first in
our hands, before they streamlined it and sold out to eBay and only gave the
algorithms to paying customers. But before that we could do a lot of activism,
and we could support independent artists. And it was a lot of sharing of
philosophy, art, music, inspiration, science, wonder, in a spirit of global
friendship, all this during the Bush era. But that changed quickly, as most
things do. But during that earlier time I was communicating with people around
the world and we wrote some songs together. I also got involved with some of
Mad Pride (Creatively Maladjusted here) and I wrote songs with people in Mad
Pride some. Then some friends added onto some songs. Again, the songs were a
lot better when people added on. I was very grateful for their help. Some songs
are solo but really they were better when others added on. And it was more
collaboration and a variety of styles. Also some musicians who were in Barely
Bipedal added on to some. There are many I don’t have online that I would have
liked to redo. For a while Project Bluebird got around the internet. Then when
I was not so well, I took it down offline numerous times and tried to change
the name. I am leaving what I have up now for good, sort of as back up because
I tend to lose things in this digital age. So there are some on YouTube [see video below] and SoundCloud [https://soundcloud.com/user-361366447].
The name Project Bluebird came out of a series
of synchronicities. Also bluebirds are beautiful. But I like Earth Folk too
because all the writers are from all over the earth. And it is sort of folk
music and we are all folks.
I loved
your drum piece dedicated to Leonard Peltier I found on YouTube, simple and yet
so evocative! How does music connect with activism in your view?
I know
you think some music really has a ‘healing quality’. Does that apply to most
music as a general concept or do you think some kind of music might be
particularly helpful in the most difficult times?
Thank you about the drum piece. I really need to
work on staying with the basic heartbeat. That is actually the hardest one to
play with other drummers. I remember an elder drummer trying to teach me this
and I am still learning. I tend to like to fly off. But really I need to come
back to the earth heartbeat. Anyone in a drum group playing that beat has to
keep it all together. Well, it seems simple on the surface but it is really the
most challenging.
As for activism, Barely Bipedal was very
intertwined with activism. James wrote a song during the second Gulf War that
got around, “I’m Iraq in my mind (I just can’t Kuwait).
In the second generation Bush years many of us
in Project Bluebird had been writing in response. A lot of those songs I would
record very quickly and poorly and post them right away. A lot of them needed
to be re-recorded.
Now mostly what is left online are the better
recordings. And even then, some of my solo ones need some work. But I am just
leaving them there before I lose them all.
Yes about healing music. I do really benefit
from healers doing music. It can be all kinds of music and it can be protest at
the same time, and there many facets to healing, sometimes outrage, catharsis,
sometimes relaxing the limbic system so one can respond instead of reacting in
a way that is not helpful. Right now I am appreciating Esperanza Spalding, “12
Little Spells” you can hear most of this album on YouTube. Some try to compare
her to Bjork but really she is in her own category. There is a lot of jazz and
soul, poetry, and art that heals in her work, just beautiful. My words don’t do
her justice. She is a bass player. Also, well, Joy Harjo, our Poet Laureate
here, she was my professor in college and is still an inspiration. Her poetry
is wise guidance and she also puts poems to music and sings and plays
saxophone. She is a real healer. I think Poet laureates are more important than
politicians right now really. All the poets, musicians, artists...healers. Oh,
you know, I really like that healing tone music too, like singing bowls etc., there
is so much grief right now, we need the healing.
Well, thanks
again! Is there anything else you want to add?
I want to thank my friend Daniel Brudno for helping me with this music project. None of
this could have been accomplished without him. He is also a musician and has
studied flamenco. I was sick a lot and he helped me with everything, sort of as
my manager and helped with getting everything together. I am forever grateful
to Dan.
“ Il Viaggio nasce da un'attenta selezione di
opere di autori contemporanei ed è frutto di esperienze ed emozioni singolari e
fortemente private. La necessità di intraprendere un percorso itinerante porta
gli autori alla ricerca di nuove forme di sentimento che rendono questa
raccolta l'esempio delle innumerevoli interpretazioni che l'animo umano può
regalare all'esperienza del viaggio. ”
La raccolta contiene la mia poesia“Dubh Linn”. apsv
