THE GRINCH MAY NOT HAVE STOLEN CHRISTMAS BUT HE SURE STOLE ITS MUSIC

Irving Berlin may have done as much to murder Christmas music as he did to nurture it. Just as Brahms was afraid to follow in Beethoven footsteps before writing his first symphony, modern composers seem intimidated by the successes of their predecessors. Or maybe the relatively young genre of literal-minded holiday songs that Irving started suffered an unforeseen crib death. Sure, the 1940s was the time of the loneliest and most homesick Yule-tides that ever ebbed and flowed. So songs like 'White Christmas," "I'll Be Home for Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," as well as "What Are You Doing New year's Eve," have a necessity that seasonal songs have never quite had since.

But Christmas owed, in significant part, causality for these songs to the last war ever fought for a just cause. Korea, of course, allowed the continued and justified war-rationale for songs like "The Christmas Waltz" and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas." But by Vietnam, as wantonly wasteful a war as any ever fought, the music ghost of Christmas Past could not muster an equal spirit to replace it.

By century's end, Christmas music belonged to a past without a sustaining present and future. And suddenly pop stars for whom WWII and Korea were vague memories (if even that) were forced to recycle songs--in limited supply--for their Christmas albums. Nearly 80 years after the war that inspired the best secular Christmas songs ever written, their power have been numbed, if not enervated, by overuse. The truth is Irving set a precedent that I'm sure he expected to be equaled. But when it wasn't, these songs' excellence became a barrier to furtherance.

As a result, I declare current-day Christmas music a national cultural emergency--which no executive order will address, let alone alleviate. Since I am now a Social Security-dependent elder with little or no supplemental income, Christmas must be spent at home. As a shut-in, I have sought to remedy the dreadful dearth of Christmas music by voluntarily learning and practicing a kind of cultural ecology that my parents and grandparents were forced to practice.

Put simply, I have learned to harness general-purpose vintage music to Yuletides with their strong undertows of longing, loneliness, homesickness, shared hardship and every other condition which Christmas amplifies and deepens. For a decade, I have been creating themed annual holiday mixes with Christmas, Winter and New Years specifically in mind but which (almost but not entirely) harness multi-purpose songs for the occasions at hand. With careful curation and juxtaposition, the mixes may hopefully serve as meaningful narratives suitable for both specific holiday and general season. Of course, some contemporary recordings are invited to participate in my seasonal synergy, but their inclusion is rare.

The Christmas music I hear nowadays has only a commercial motivation to justify it. Of course, the artists are not solely to blame. Climate change has made it hard for Mother Nature to supply suitable objective correlatives for enduring winter iconography; so those old songs today fail at evocation and invocation. Indeed, they are unintended but inadvertent reminders of the man-made ecocide that confronts us. Most music I use comes from times when Mother Nature was alive and well and willing to contribute weather amenable to the music being sung or listened to.

Here are links to 4 Christmas, Winter and New Years mixes I prepared for one of my favorite music blogs: Big Ten-Inch Record. It is my sincere wish that these 120 songs (in total) bring you good cheer and restore any lost faith in seasonal music. To those artists among you, maybe these mixes will inspire a new approach to holiday music making.


 1. "A Pre-Climate Change Christmas"
https://mega.nz/#!zRUhlKRa!rkVbhwU7SpgV1xF_MFmM26UVemMN4Abs6qqpiRSFfqM

2.  "A Bedford Falls Christmas"

https://mega.nz/#!7Il0hITZ!umMomVYzUtjhmT5trQuxv-OFR8zyMwQES-pZttd6Z7I

3.  "An Ardmore New Year's Romance: Three's a Crowd"

https://mega.nz/#!DNsEDQAI!Dg1boa9egflDBuX3djzTtEllThrAgUElmejdO8HQLic

4. "Big Apple Bash: A New Years Musical Narrative

https://mega.nz/#!fMk3FaKQ!oPAm3tXAMMJ1q6Zb3Tuy_ZRajeQncQuatjiP5W-E_Bw

ALLEGORIZE YOUR LIFE

My private Ancestry.com says I am descended in part from Hieronymus Bosch and last night the ghosts of his genes played host to my subconscious in an all-night dream, or dream-state. The point of this dream was to teach me how to re-sanctify my life; that what is secular is simply sacred objects enervated by habit and indifference to a point where they can no longer serve as amulet or talisman or even lucky rabbit's foot.

The dream began in a deserted shopping mall where those who frequented it did so for a purpose I could not fathom or divine. So I decided to follow a small group of visitors to see where they could be going. They walked for what seemed like miles of empty corridors until they reached the entrance of what, it turned out, was an amusement park. Or so I thought it in my desiccated mental state.

In reality, the park was a training center for some kind of knight- or ninja-hood. Each ride was part of a training whose goal was some kind of life-skill adding up, at some point, to life-proficiency I had either forgotten or given up hope of ever attaining. I remember strapping in to a roller coaster and being told by the ticket taker to not be fooled by its excitement into mistaking it for a joy ride. "Do not mistake the pleasure of the experience for its meaning." There were nods of agreement from the few others in my car. At first, I thought he was being rather puritanical, but the ride itself taught me that pleasure was merely a doorway into other dimensions and textures.

At a steep water slide, I quickly learned that seeking thrills would have endangered my life and that I was to feel a clam in the midst of high-bombardment stimuli. And so it went, ride after ride, always finding a different meaning and contentment from those I was used to.

The last ride led to a park exit and the realization that there was no way to return to it. I was out on a busy city street where I was to "apply" the knowledge and lessons I had learned in the park.

There was such a welter of sights and sounds that I felt confused and lost. How, I cried out, was I to manage this chaos?

"You must allegorize your life," a voice inside, yet everywhere, commanded. Immediately, I understood that an allegorized life was one of perceptual alacrity, the likes of which poets had been trying to teach me my whole life since first reading Jack Kerouac in high school. If I had learned anything in the last decade it was that, given the circumstance, a red wheelbarrow was a grail: that the object was simply an archetype of deepest need and highest use.

GOD IS THE NAME OF EVERYTHING THAT SPEAKS TO YOU
It was then I felt the presence of a Guide. This Guide spoke through intuition. Hence everything I experienced served as a conduit for this intuition.

Suddenly the street was empty.  The Guide explained that the stage was emptied as a prelude to learning. "Nothing is lost," it said, repeating with certainty, "Nothing." Then the Guide said I would be given a series of illustrations that would teach me how to navigate the most teeming of circumstances. Suddenly I saw what seemed like King Arthur raise Excalibur (ex-caliber) in the air and "seem" to drop it. As it was just about to touch the ground, it turned into a backpack, which was picked up by a bystander who appeared out of nowhere. "Thanks," the bystander said. "I thought I had lost it." By then, Arthur had disappeared and the bystander walked off into thin air.

Immediately, a second illustration began, involving a golden cup--obviously a grail--hovering in mid air. It, too, seemed to be falling to earth when suddenly it turned into a paper cup in a child's hand who was drinking soda from it with a straw. The child, too, disappeared.

"Do you catch my drift?" the Guide asked. I answered in a lame affirmative, the way I often do to my wife when she asks me about something to which she knows I have not been listening. "Now face the world in a new way."

FROM WAYWARD TOWARD WAY'S WARD
Poet Gary Snyder writes, "The Way followed leads for ever. In one second, it is crossed and left behind forever." That is why Zen Masters keep saying, "The Way is not a way." Follow No-Mind and No-Way.

For the first time in my life, these admonitions were perceptual not conceptual in nature and I could walk a way where each thing at hand lends a hand and need not lead any farther than that since the world is founded in a trust based on the adequacy of the moment. This is a kind of transcendent existentialism where essence is existence and vice-versa.

Remember when you admired some child's first baby steps? Well, I took my first adult steps in my dream last night. I lived in a world where everything serves as guidance. As such the Way is the Present and acts as a ward (in the sense of, say, a Swiss Embassy) for our security and safety. I wish I had words to describe my first walk down the Main Street that seemed like entertainment, education and erudition all at once. I have never felt so self-sufficient--almost an avatar of self-reliance. I can only hope, with the intensity of prayer, that I have been discharged into a world where I possess unforgettable acumen and alacrity. More in the days ahead.

AN ARDMORE NEW YEARS ROMANCE: THREE'S A CROWD

How funny that we should spend the one night of the year meant for farewells and welcomes painting the town red because we otherwise might feel blue. I’ve decided to paint the year-end town of Ardmore soft white as in candlelight and snow. This New Year’s Eve & Arrival, Herr & Her Federman will spend the last night of the year the way they have learned to: as a twosome. This mix is for those who have made the same choice or been given no other one. I call it “An Ardmore New Years Romance: Three’s A Crowd.” 

I don’t mean the title to sound selfish or snooty. It’s just that the last few years, to allude to a title of one of the song’s found herein, New Years Eve has been “Just a Night for Meditation.” So the songs sing of rapture, reflection  and respite. Of course, there will be spirits to enhance the spirit of the evening --wine, perhaps dancing, plus kindred activities. But I can imagine prolonged introspection and so you’ll hear a Tchaikovsky piano piece written for the January section of his suite, “The Seasons,” called “By the Fireside.” Here it’s in an orchestral arrangement by Morton Gould. And as your gaze drifts outside the windows, you’ll hear Debussy’s “Footsteps in the Snow,” arranged--seraphically--for choir. 

Most of the music comes from radio times of the past, when the night air itself was download medium. But I’m sure my parents were able to scrape together enough spare change to buy a romantic record or two. Songs like “In a Sentimental Mood” were malleable enough to be suited to most any nocturnal occasion. In any case, the songs are meant to both soothe and stir your senses. 

A kindly caveat: If the kids are on school break (K-through-Senior-Year-of-College), send them to the safest safe house you can find or nicest party you can trust them to attend. If there is even a faint possibility of alcohol or Mary Jane, tell them you’ll pay for Uber or gladly serve as a designated driver. This leaves worry-free hours for just the two of you. And this music is for those unhurried hours when the two of you are alone, thinking about what’s going or gone and what’s to come. Please try not to think about carbon emissions or Gaza--unless a God-Who-Can’t-Say-No to meaningful entreaty is listening in, or is in constant contact with his newest go-between, Clarence--newly hovering with bells on his feet as well as his wings.

In closing, let me quote a salutation from a Depression Era poem by Lorine Niedecker: “Here’s good health, friends, / and soothing syrup for sleeplessness.” Since I have tried to program music that answers only to the highest powers of creativity within us, insomnia sufferers will, I hope, know this night as one of tolerable, possibly joyful, forbearance. Keep in mind, the hub of my inspiration and “story line” was “Just a Night for Meditation.” So the music is meant mostly for silent or whispered affirmation. 

Unless, or until, Buster gives this a Mega re-berth, it’s available at WeTransfer for the next week. 

https://we.tl/t-geS19Fzeey

This will probably be my last holiday mix--unless the spirit compels me to make another. In the meantime, I’ve begun listening to the avalanche of winter music at Buster’s, Ernie’s and Lee’s blogs. You might also go to Andy Senior’s Radiola from which I “borrowed” two songs.

http://radiolablog.blogspot.com/2017/12/new-years-eve-dance-party-2009-redux.html

Prepared for:    http://big10inchrecord.blogspot.com

RUMMAGING THROUGH THE HOPE-CHEST OF INFINITY

What is different about me me from my life-threatened brothers and sisters in Gaza and Yemen? I asked myself last night during Zikr meditation? The answer astonished me: "You at least can curse God in comfort and safety. They must curse him in unrelieved danger." Bombs, drones, sniper fire, these Arabs live in flight, even when frozen in fear. So I asked my pretend-other and hidden self, "So what can I do?" The answer, one I have received before: "Whether or not you believe in so-called 'God', you must cherish the leisure you have been given to think of and reunite with the all-encompassing vastness in which you presently serve as light-node and sentient throb. Soon your life-force will pass into another body and 'you' will return to quiescence. If your vitality is sufficient, it will be relayed into another being. This is the only re-incarnation you can be sure of: the indestructibility of consciousness and its passageway of continual embodiment. You must work for a world where contemplative leisure, and actions based on it, are greater norms than now. For the sake of all those who live in war zones, you must declare yourself and be a peace zone." 

Although I am supposed to be a source of my own solace, I still seek in my forbears solace for earlier times of correlative calamity. But I see they often struggled with the same disquieted leisure. This poem by Lorine Niedecker, written just after WWII, for her friend, mentor and fellow poet, Louis Zukofsky, sums up my fight for song's survival:

"An acre of music"

or a room closer to it

movement, rest, repeat,

for those making music

but not allowed to hear it

and those in peril

on the street

If there is a prayer for me to make, it is a yearning for a wider, and one day entire, cessation of the danger to the sacred privacy of meditation. What is truly to be pursued, and meant, as happiness, is found there: Connection, so intense and immense that it is autonomic. I have been blessed with the time and space to end the latency of light within us; to transform idleness into stillness and the activities native and exclusive to it. I feel duty-bound to help restore America to its transcendentalist moorings. In a post-war poem, Lorine writes: "My only / fear: I'll go blind before I give / the soil my phosphorous." When spelled with a capital P, Phosphorous is the name of the Morning Star. When spelled with a small p, it means the power of radiance within a substance. The poet is talking about death as an exchange of power. Something inside me now knows this is the relay system of which I feel a part when I let the vastness console me.

This "pursuit of happiness" now summarizes what I mean by citizenship. And in this nation founded on the central notion of such happiness, there can be no unwelcome immigrants. I have been granted a sacred leisure which I do not yet exercise enough. But it has helped with exorcism of ignorance. As Lorine puts it: " . . . I'm not stuck / in that old stuff: cosmos versus puny / man, God, no. . . ." When true seeing is the metric, we are Seers who see all as in All! Ah!. 

In closing, let me offer a 1930 Song of Solace, "Bye Bye Blues," as sung by George Metaxa, courtesy of my friend, Andy Senior. Metaxa sings the usually-ignored verse, which once you hear, will give the song deeper meaning. This has become my favorite recording of this standard. You'll find it here for the next 7 days.

https://we.tl/t-mVSPkmtWkj

THE HAIKU LIVES

Lorine Niedecker's early December 1935 calendar entry:

Sweet ekes
of soft drips--
bathroom
luxuries.

No poem I have ever read makes better peace with poverty.

A BEDFORD FALLS CHRISTMAS: HOMECOMING

I'm back for what Yeats called, in another context, "speech after long silence." I intend to become as regular a poster to this blog as I formerly was. We start, mindful of the season, with:

"A Bedford Christmas: Homecoming"

I'll be 77 on the same day Mozart turns 263 years old, January 27, 2019. Seven is a very profound number and I'll be receiving two of them as a birthday gift. It's the only gift I'm likely to receive since I've reached pensioner status and live, almost solely, on Social Security. This has been my case for several years now since I'm a journalist and my home, the Guttenberg Galaxy, imploded in 2009, taking with it my last full-time job and slowly eroding meaningful freelance work.

Even though I'm Jewish, I'm a sucker for Christmas, especially because J.S. Bach, G.F. Handel and I. Berlin composed some of their best music for December 25th. I'd be a fool not to listen to and relish it. Since I was born on a January 27th which marked the turning point in Hitler's failed conquest of Russia, I associate particularly cold, harsh, snowy but, ultimately, victorious winters with my Baltimore nativity. They say Mozart's grave is unmarked; I say it's just covered in snow--like everyone else's at this time of year, or once upon the wintry times not so long ago when I was young.

This year I expect a bitingly cold season as Arctic weather gets chased south by climate change. Given my bleak weather and wherewithal expectations, I have prepared a nostalgic mix for penurious sentimentalists like myself who remember pre-MasterCard Christmases funded completely by savings accounts and piggy banks, ones rooted in wishes no department store or its Santa could make come true.

America was at war and homecoming and homesickness were the major maladies of the time. They didn’t stop at war’s end, just morphed into the Korean War and McCarthyism. I’ll never forget reading about Americans who fought in Spain being hauled before Senate and House committees, accused of being “premature anti-fascists” (a euphemism for “Communist”).

So this mix is heavy on love and longing—especially of a familial sort which, as any Philip Roth fan knows, is not a Jewish specialty. Nevertheless, It’s a celebration of “family values”—albeit under duress.

I call it: “A Bedford Falls Christmas: Homecoming,” in homage to the America Frank Capra affirmed in “It’s A Wonderful Life” where George Bailey saw how much worse the world would be without him and went on living to prevent it becoming Pottersville. The songs reflect the values of the world his humanity saves: needs based on compassion not consumption. Hope you enjoy. Remember availability is limited to one week at WeTransfer.

https://we.tl/t-ZHHMMMHzlw