Thus Spake Captain Beefheart

"If you want to be a different fish you gotta jump out of the school."

Captain Beefheart said that his formal education was "half a day of kindergarten."  (He also said that he had a friend who said he stayed too long.)

Found a bunch 1 of Beefheart music on Amazon's free listen thing, so I've been hittin' that pipe.

Read a review of the compilation Captain Beefheart: Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 to 1972 (Rhino, 2014) by Andy Beta who said that Beefheart's music was "the closest rock music could get to cubism."  Which made me go hmmmmmm.  (Which autocorrect first wanted to make "hammy" and then "cmmmmmmmm."  Interesting.)  

Also interesting, this bit from the song "Lick My Decals Off, Baby":

“Rather than I want to hold your hand/ I wanna swallow you whole/ ‘n I wanna lick you everywhere it’s pink/ ‘n everywhere you think.” 

In another review, I read this line:  "For Trout Mask Replica, Beefheart and his band practiced for 14 hours a day, sometimes they slept in the studio."  Holy shit!  It's kind of hard not to take that kind of insanity seriously, ya know?

1 Dust Sucker,  Prime Quality Beef, Dichotomy, & Captain Beefheart Live at Bickershaw 1972

Running. Always chasing white light.

Just watched the video for "Running"* for the fourth time in a row** and this time around within the first few notes I started crying.  I wasn't sure why at first.  It's a beautiful song, and the interplay between Andrew Carroll's gentle voice,  Jessi Williams's lovely aching voice, the driving rhythm, and the haunting "strings"*** are amazing, but that wasn't what made me cry.  And the song's lyrics are very potent and poignant, and the video itself is really cool and unique, but that wasn't it, either.

And then I realized that it was you.  "My" L.A. Woman.****  

Which I should have realized immediately, since I think about you every day.  Several times a day. Every fucking day. Every. Fucking. Day.  

I'm pretty sure that you would have let me fuck you.  Well, that's actually just an understatement that my shitty self-image prompts me to say.  I know you wanted me to fuck you.  And I have regretted not fucking you thousands of times. Literally. And I've berated myself for not doing so.  For being a coward.*****  But watching that video for The Lonely Wild's "Running" made something click for me. It wasn't cowardice at all.  I thought that we were just beginning our relationship.  I thought we had years ahead of us.  So I didn't want or see a need to rush things.  Ha ha. The myopia of the love struck male.   Which reminds me of a short song I wrote called "The End."  Which I am just going to lay down right here and now.

I've learned in relationships

Keep your runway clear

So you can always make your getaway

Ah, it don't make no sense to pile possessions on the tarmac

'cause you never know where you stand with a woman, so boy

Keep your runway clear.

You might think it's the beginning

But it's the end.

* From The Lonely Wild's new album, Chasing White Light.   Which is a great album.  You should buy it pretty soon.

** I can't remember why I thought I needed an asterisk here.

*** I don't know if they are actually strings.  But they sound like they could be strings.  Or like strings.  You know, the part that goes, "Nnnnnrh nnnnrh nnnnrh nrh nrrrrh  nrrrrrh  nrrrrh."  Yeah, that part.  Ain't them notes strings?

****  Which is, in a strange bit of circularity / serendipity, the name I gave to the piece I recorded and sent to The Lonely Wild when they sent out a message asking fans to record stories and send them to them.  And the story I sent was about going to Los Angeles to visit L.A. Woman for a few days because my wife had just left me a couple of months before and I was a steaming hot mess.  And the story was also about sleeping with that beautiful woman and being afraid ****** to fuck her even though I really wanted to and was sure that she wanted to fuck me back.


***** Probably unnecessary to point out at this juncture, but since a little while ago I no longer think of this as an act of cowardice, but as an act of respect and confidence in the idea that we had a future together.

****** See *****.

a piece of ass

Jean-Jacques Lequeu [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


from 1811, by Francis Grose

PIECE. A wench. A damned good or bad piece; a girl who is more or less active and skilful in the amorous congress. Hence the (CAMBRIDGE) toast, May we never have a PIECE (peace) that will injure the constitution.

I've also read somewhere--can't locate it right now--that "ass" was specifically referred to because that was considered to be the nastiest part of the human body, so it was a way of reinforcing the worthlessness of the woman who is only considered as a sexual object with no relationship potential.  It reduces her not only to her body as sexual object, but degrades her further by equating her with the part of the body which is most closely associated with waste.

Nasty.

I've never used this term to refer to a woman . . . not even as a "joke," and I'll say almost anything for a joke.  But a piece of ass is not in my vocabulary.  I remember standing in the hallway at school with a young female teacher and another male teacher my age, and a very attractive young girl walked by.  Almost immediately the young female teacher said, "She's a piece of ass."  And you could tell it was meant as a way of reducing the girl, not an acknowledgement of the girl's physical beauty.  I was stunned.  Even if that girl was the Great Whore of Louisville, she didn't deserve to be thought of as a piece of ass by one of her teachers.

But then again, a quick Google Search revealed a woman's t-shirt emblazoned with the words

100% Certified USDA Approved Piece of Ass √

which I'd assume only exists because there are some women who think that this is an apt way to advertise themselves to the world,  so maybe it's just me.

But I was struck by the fact that in the movie Saul fia (Son of Saul), the Nazis referred to the dead bodies of Jews as "the pieces"--presumably in order to distance themselves from the fact that they were participating in the merciless slaughter of innocent fellow human beings. 

That might be worth thinking about next time you hear someone use this phrase.

On Jesus's Side

I took the kids to St. James for service a week or so ago and my brain popped a long-stalked eye above the miasmic mist covering the scummy surface of my struggling to remain conscious mind when I heard this bit of the gospel reading for the day:



38 "Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."  

39 "Do not stop him," Jesus said.  "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 

40 for whoever is not against us is for us.  

41 "I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward."

Hmmm.  Whoever is not against us is for us.  That seems like a pretty significant statement, doesn't it?  For instance, are Lutherans against Catholics?  I mean apart from the ignorant, fart-mouthed ones?  Of course not.  And . . . what about Buddhists?  Moslems?  Or, for that matter, atheists?  Well, some of them, of course, but I think there's a difference between an atheist and a God Hater.  A misdeist.  I don't consider myself a Christian anymore, but I certainly do have immense respect, admiration, and love for Jesus.  So I'm not against Him, for sure.  So . . . doesn't that mean that I am for Him?  And that I will certainly not lose my reward?

It makes sense to me.  I've long thought that if you're a good person, you are up for "the reward" no matter what God (or lack thereof) you worship.  I mean, really, could God be so tiny and insecure that S/he would say, "Hey, you're a really good fellow, and I see that you've spent your life trying to do the right thing consistently . . . but since you haven't invoked my name, you're going to have to suffer eternal torment."  How can people believe that kind of bullshit?  (Of course I know that they do.  When I was at the beginning of my mental illness phase I decided to join Middletown United Methodist Church.  Went to the first session of their version of RCIA, all good.  Went to the second session and the guy leading it said that he felt really bad for a long time because his mother was a good and moral person, but she hadn't accepted Jesus as her personal savior so she was going to go to Hell.  I asked him if that was his personal opinion or church doctrine (he wasn't a pastor).  He said it was church doctrine.  I pointed out that most of the people alive in the world . . . and most of the people who had died throughout history . . . were not Christians, and asked if he thought that all of those people were going to burn in Hell.  He said yes.  I told him that that made me sick and walked out of the meeting.  Thus endeth my foray into joining that church.)

So I'd like to know how the fundamentalists / exclusionists deal with that bit.  I'm pretty sure they just ignore it, as that's the standard modus operandi for such things.  But I'd like to chat it up with one of them and see what they have to say about it.

James Edward Sutherland

Big surprise:  I tend to be a bit obsessive.  Especially when it comes to writers and singers.  So it's not at all uncommon for me to try to acquire--or at least experience--a writer or singer's complete works.  Charles Dickens.  Henry Thomas Buckle.  E. L. Doctorow.  Harlan Ellison. Philip Wylie. George Orwell.  Carolyn Chute.  David Bowie. Bob Geldof.  Iggy Pop. John Cale. Lou Reed.  Ryuichi Sakamoto.  John Mellencamp. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Some times it's pretty easy. William Shake-speare was a fucking breeze.  Sometimes it's really hard and expensive.  Try collecting the complete works of Philip Wylie sometime and you'll see. And sometimes it seems impossible.  Because there's no trail to follow.

I first read James Sutherland's Stormtrack when it was published in 1974 as the first book in The Harlan Ellison Discovery Series.  I remember liking it, but I forgot about it pretty quickly. In part, no doubt, because the second book in The Harlan Ellison Discovery Series was Arthur Byron Cover's Autumn Angels, and that was just an orgy at first sight.  But I never forgot about James Sutherland.  In fact, I still have a copy of Stormtrack around here somewhere.  And, since I hadn't bumped into any other Sutherland books, every once in a while I'd go Googling to see what I could find. And invariably I would find nothing.  But I never gave up. And yesterday I found some stuff.  Not as much as I'd like to have found, for sure.  3 stories, 9 essays, and a review.  None of them readily available, but most available-ish. In fact, even as we speak, the stories and two of the essays are heading my way, thanks to the munificence of Amazon.com .  Four of the pieces are ensconced in books.  Ironically, I once owned one of those books . . . but it was before I knew or cared about James Sutherland.  All 9 of the remaining pieces are available in issues of Vertex: The Magazine of Science Fiction, and were published between April of 1973 and February of 1975.  And, in fact, so far as I can tell,  February 1975 is the last time James Sutherland published anything.  Which makes me sad. Did he die?  The source I found (isfdb Science Fiction) doesn't think so.  It lists his birth date as August 25, 1948, and has no date of death noted.  (Then again, it also attributed two "essays" to James Edward Sutherland which clearly belong to James Runcieman Sutherland, so maybe they shouldn't be completely trusted.) 

Or did he just stop writing?  Imagine that.  Young James (a mere 24 years old) attends the prestigious Clarion Writer's Workshop in 1972.  Just getting into this place is quite an accomplishment, but it gets even better.  One of his short stories is published in a book put out by the Workshop (Clarion II).  And then he begins writing short articles which are published in Vertex.  Two more stories are published in anthologies.  And then Harlan Ellison himself accepts a story for The Last Dangerous Visions . . . and decides to publish the novel Stormtrack as the first book in his own Discovery Series. How fucking sweet must that have been?  How could James not think that he was On His Way?

And then . . . something happened.  After June 1974 only three pieces are published:  two articles for Vertex and an Italian translation of Stormtrack.  And those might have been in the pipes already.  So what the hell happened in June of 1974?  

Strangely enough, there's another JAMES E SUTHERLAND
who was born in the same year--1948 (but not the same day)--who died in Vietnam on 4/2/1971.  A little too close for comfort.  Which does, I suppose, beg the question, Did this James E Sutherland go to Vietnam, too?  And if he did, what happened to him there?

I hope nothing.  I hope he just got tired of the shit hole of science fiction and decided to do something else with his life.  Even though I would very much like to be reading his novels and short stories and articles to this day.

Here's the stuff I found on the internet:

James Edward Sutherland 
born Greenwich, Connecticut: 25 August 1948

US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "At the Second Solstice" in Clarion II (anthology 1972) edited by Robin Scott Wilson; in his Near Future sf novel, Stormtrack (1974), astronauts manning a weather satellite must deal with the Disaster of a storm of unprecedented ferocity. 


Novel

Stormtrack (June 1974) 
translated into Italian as L'osservatorio  (The Observatory) by Beata Della Frattina (March 1975)

Short Fiction 

"At the Second Solstice" (1972) in Clarion II June 1972)
"Beside Still Waters (1972) with Edward Bryant in Generation: An 
          Anthology of Speculative Fiction (July 1972)
"Swords of Ifthan (1973) in Omega (1973) --9 reprints:  Omega 
          August 1974, 100 Great Science Fiction Short Stories March 
          1978, August 1980, plus 5 other printings, and Urania #815, 
          December 1979
"The Amazonas Link (unpublished) --purchased for The 
                  Last Dangerous Visions

Essays 

"Introduction (A Journal of the Plague Year) (1968)*
"From Competition 4: Story Leads from the Year's Worst Fantasy and SF (1973) 
"The Truck That Flies (Vertex, April 1973) 
"The Next Drop You Drink (Vertex, June 1973) 
"Geothermal Power - Nature's Home Remedy (Vertex, October 1973) 
"Life At A Distance (Vertex, December 1973) 
"The Unhuman Explorers (Vertex, February 1974) 
"Ghost Universe (Vertex, June 1974) 
"Lands Adrift (Vertex, August 1974) 
"Europeans in Space (Vertex, February 1975) 
"Introduction (The Ladies of Grace Adieu) (2006) **

*James Runcieman  Sutherland 1900 to 1996
** Professor James Sutherland, Director of Sidhe Studies , University of AberdeenApril 26, 1900, died February 24, 1996.  Looks like these two are (1) not James Edward Sutherland and (2) are the same guy . . . though that's more than a bit confusing, since the second piece referred to here was "written" in 2006, which is ten years after this fellow died.  

Review 

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke  (Vertex, February 1974) 

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?15768