Ready to try again

We bought some champagne a week or so ago as we prepared to help bring in the new year Friday night, but then it turned out we never had a New Year's party to go to.

Omicron, you know.

So the champagne is still unopened in the refrigerator, waiting for something to celebrate. And the way I see it, the longer we wait for something to celebrate, the lower the bar for an actual celebration falls. Originally, the champagne was meant to welcome in 2022 – a major event, I guess – but once that didn't happen, we might actually pop the cork for something else. Anything else.

Maybe I'll open the bottle because we finally got our Christmas decorations down. Or maybe because I set a new personal record for my calorie burn that day in the gym. Or maybe because of that dime I found in the Food Lion parking lot. (Finding somebody's lost change is still pretty exciting to me. I think it goes back to my days as the community swimming pool's maintenance boy. I'm the guy who had to pick up the garbage at the end of the day, and occasionally I'd find some loose money among the hot dog and candy wrappers in the grass. Back in 1965, even a quarter was a significant bonus to my meager salary. So getting excited about finding coins on the ground is a life-long conditioned response for me.)

Anyway, I try to approach each new year with a sense of optimism, but it's getting harder and harder to do so. I mean, the pandemic is still here, entering its third year. It seems that no matter how many booster shots we get, Covid is something we're going to have to live with, along with social distancing and masking.

In a 50-50 country, politics seems to have us at an impasse.

I don't know what the answer is. I suppose something could happen that brings us back to our senses, that binds instead of breaks us. 

If that happens this year, maybe I'll finally pop the cork.

That's the spirit

I'm not so sure if there was a sense of pride as much as there was a sense of purpose.

December had arrived and the good folks in our neighborhood were already putting up their Christmas decorations almost as soon as the last of the Thanksgiving turkey had been devoured. The 400 block of West 2nd Avenue, I'm pretty sure, was feeling the expectations of having been declared the Best Block in the Lexington Parks and Recreation Department's Light Up The Block contest for the past two consecutive years.

And in those two years, each house was pretty much on its own. Decorate your own house the way you want. That's the way it should be.

And it looked pretty good, too. All nine houses on the block participated, with some of the homes winning individual awards, like most original, or most traditional, or most unique.

It was kind of cool. Car loads of people actually drove down our street to have a look-see.

But what could we do differently this year?

The work is done and the neighbors gather together.

The answer turned out to be both obvious and simple: luminaries. I'm pretty sure that idea evolved during one of the neighborhood porch parties or fire pits. Maybe 100 percent sure. And I'm sure a little wine may have been involved, or perhaps some craft beer. Or both.

Anyway, one of our neighbors, Stacy Sosebee-West, ordered luminaries for the block: about 500 little translucent white bags and battery-operated tea lights. Meanwhile, T.J. Strickland had the sand we needed to put inside the bags so they wouldn't blow away.

Then, on Thursday, came the best part. Late in the afternoon, while there was still some sunlight in the sky, the neighbors came out and got to work. T.J. and Billy West loaded up two wheelbarrows with sand, with a wheelbarrow load for each side of the street.

We somehow organized an assembly-line process on the fly. On our side of the street, Keith Cude opened the folded bags one at a time. I filled each bag with a cup of sand, Stacy put a tea light in each one and then she and Billy lined them up on the sidewalk.

It was pretty much the same across the street with T.J. and his wife, Christie, and their kids, Ellie and Jackson, working the sidewalk, along with Kristi Thornhill and her twin daughters, Sarah and Mary Evann. Sam West, the son of Billy and Stacy, also joined in.

While we were in the process, Ken Coleman served as quality control, checking each luminary, making sure they were lit, properly spaced from one another and in a straight line.

The whole thing evolved into a remarkably efficient operation. In less than 40 minutes, we were done and at least 250 luminaries were in place. And it wasn't even dark yet.

The neighbors gathered to see what they had created. I've written numerous times about how unique this neighborhood is, at least as it is in my mind. But the camaraderie already on this block seemed to notch up another level.

And in a few moments, the sun slipped away and the luminaries took on their own special glow in the twilight. It was impressive. Like a church service. Like Christmas.

Suddenly, this didn't seem like a city-wide competition anymore. We were together as friends and neighbors, working with a purpose, having fun. Hey, we wondered, can they see this block from space?

Or do they see the spirit, joy and affection among us instead?

Like the way it should be. 

"Our house is a very, very, very fine house..."

 

 

Reflection

I am not a deep thinker, although there are times when I think I can have deep thoughts.

The tornadoes that ravaged six states in middle America Friday – and particularly a candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky – have brought me to this location in my brain again.

The scenes of devastation are almost overwhelming: overturned vehicles, leveled buildings, a debris field that stretches across 250 consecutive miles. And then you think: the number of people who lost their lives just two weeks before Christmas is both heartbreaking and heartrending. And then you think of the survivors whose lives have been irrevocably changed.

When I first saw the news Friday morning, I turned to Kim and tearfully choked, "You know, you try to live your life each day. You go to work, and just like that, even the weather can kill you. You just never know."

One of the first things that crossed my mind was that this devastation is another prime example of climate change, as if we needed another reminder. Tornadoes, perhaps F-5s, in December. At least 30 tornadoes in six states. One of them rampaging for an unbelievable 250 miles on the ground. We're seeing things we don't think we've ever seen before.

Yesterday, right here in Lexington, on Dec. 11, it was 73 degrees. We haven't had a decent snowfall in nearly two years.

I try not to ponder on why there is suffering in the world. I'll leave that up to the theologians. Human history is littered with tragedy. Maybe a lot of it is our own doing. We build homes on fault lines, we live in the shadow of volcanoes, we insist on living near beaches that annually welcome hurricanes. We carry guns like they were toys and ignore vaccines because unqualified politicians tell us it's a hoax.

We eat ice cream when our cholesterol is too high and our hearts threaten to attack us.

Having said that, it's still the world we live in. Wars will happen. So will famine. So will disease. So we carry on, knowing the best we can do is to play the percentages and hope the next tornado veers to the left into an open field and not to the right into downtown Main Street.

It might be the best we can do. It might be all that we have.

The Beatles: Get Back, addendum

I never get tired of writing about The Beatles. So bear with me.

After recently watching Peter Jackson's time-traveling three-part documentary The Beatles: Get Back last week, I felt compelled to add to last week's blog.

There was just too much to process. So much to unpack.

The eight hours of Jackson's video were culled from nearly 60 hours of archived footage taken during The Beatles Let It Be sessions, held at Twickenham Film Studio and Apple headquarters in January 1969 and shot by directer Michael Lindsey-Hogg. The resulting film was a gloomy overview of the eventual breakup of the world's most prodigious band.

Jackson's effort, by contrast, showed The Beatles, at times, joking around, serious and mostly friendly with each other. The Beatles say so themselves in the footage. At least, that's how it came out in the film editing. But I'll take it.

I suspect the truth of their eventual breakup lay somewhere between the two films, released more than 50 years of each other. The one thing we truly gained here was perspective.

There were seminal moments for me in Jackson's work. I'll go through a few of them, as much for myself as for you.

Part 1

• About an hour into Part 1, and four days into the three-week project, we reach what I think is the most remarkable moment of the entire documentary. Paul, George and Ringo are sitting around together, waiting for John to show up. Paul picks up his signature Hofner violin bass and starts strumming a tune that only he can hear hidden in the synapses and axions of his brain. He's playing the bass as if it's a six-string Martin acoustic. Who does that?

A moment later, a melody appears and the beat is catching. Ringo starts hand-clapping a percussion line. George, who was yawning and bored to tears just 60 seconds earlier, picks up his guitar and follows along. We instantly recognize the tune as "Get Back," and already Paul is singing fragments of the lyrics.

Then John finally arrives, picks up his rhythm guitar, and seamlessly jams with the others to a tune he's never heard before.

It's a remarkable moment. The sequence was caught mostly by an overhead camera and, 50 years later, we truly feel like flies on the wall as we watch something special happening. We were granted access to the birth of a new single, created, coaxed and recognizable within two minutes. Two weeks later, The Beatles are playing it on the roof of Apple headquarters in full glory.

• Some of this documentary can be tedious as we listen into banal conversations and bits and pieces of songs from a group that knows it is fraying at the edges. Near the end of Part 1, George has had enough. He's been ignored. Disrespected. He announces that he is leaving the group. It's lunchtime. The others aren't sure what's happening. "See you 'round the clubs" he says and walks away.

In the film's most tender moment, as the group tries to figure out what to do, Paul, John and Ringo get ready to leave for the day. Studio engineers, girlfriends, technicians still linger, but the three come together in an arm-embracing huddle. We can't hear what they're saying, but we see it. The band is making an effort to stay viable in the midst of chaos. As the group begins to splinter, these three may be never closer than this moment.

The background music, as the scene fades to black, is George's "Isn't It A Pity?", which will ultimately end up on his epic All Things Must Pass trilogy. It's a timely lament of sorrow and heartache.

Part 2

• A few minutes into Part 2, Paul and Ringo are both on the verge of tears. George, who left the group on Friday, still hasn't returned. And John is late for Monday's session. John is always late.

Paul briefly touches on the forces pressing in on The Beatles after nearly 13 years together, and he can foresee their demise. John finally arrives in time for lunch, and in a revealing discussion with Paul around a hidden microphone in an arrangement of flowers in the studio canteen, Lennon/McCartney discuss how they've alienated George. It's almost a revelation to them, and they make another effort to get George to return.

• At the 21-minute mark, Ringo comes to work and immediately joins Paul at the Bluthner piano, where they bang out an original off-the-cuff boogie woogie tune together ("I Bought a Piano the Other Day"). I'm stunned because I didn't know Ringo could play the piano. "Lookit that," I said to myself.  "They can all play multiple instruments but can't read a note of sheet music."

• About 40 minutes into Part 2, George is back and the sessions have moved out of Twickenham and into the friendly recording studio in brand-new Apple headquarters on Savile Row. The Beatles are back at work, but there's an energy and a focus that's obviously missing.

Then, in a stroke of serendipity, Billy Preston arrives unannounced just to say hello to some old friends.  A keyboardist who backed Little Richard, Preston knew The Beatles as long ago as 1962. Because the group is now planning a live album, they need a piano player, because as good as The Beatles are, none of them can play guitar and piano at the same time. Would you like to have a go, Billy?

Billy sits down at an electric piano and immediately joins in with the others to "I've Got a Feeling" as if he's known the song all his life. He makes all the difference. Paul smiles. John smiles. The documentary smiles, and the new energy Preston creates carries the film all the way to the end.

"You're in the group," John tells Billy.

Part 3

• The opening sequence has Ringo back at the piano, working on a tune called "Octopus's Garden," which eventually shows up on the Abbey Road album.

Ringo is stuck and George comes over to help. It's a memorable moment as we see another song taking shape.

• But the final segment is building toward the famous rooftop concert, which covers the final 40 minutes or so of the documentary. It's amazing. And it's not really a concert, either. But it is their last performance as The Beatles, and Jackson gives us all of it, for the first time, from start to finish.

There's just enough time to knock out 10 tunes, all in bitingly cold weather. But it's more like a rehearsal. "Get Back" is played three times. "Don't Let Me Down" and "I've Got A Feeling" each are played twice. Also included in the set are "One After 909," "Dig A Pony," and an instrumental of "God Save the Queen." The last few songs are played in the presence of the police, who are responding to a noise complaint. The bobbies are unfailingly polite, but confused. How do you arrest the United Kingdom's greatest musical export for noise disturbance?

And then it's over.

 

 

The Beatles Get Back

The country was still in bewildered grieving that February evening when we gathered around the old black-and-white Motorola television set to see what all the fuss was about.

Just 79 days earlier, the trajectory of our world shifted dramatically when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, virtually before our very eyes, it seemed. We were a nation that was seriously wounded, treading our anxiety through time, uncertain about ... everything.

We may have been seeking relief.

Little did we know that that impossible trajectory was about to shift again. Both seismically and sonically, in fact.

So our family sat down and watched The Ed Sullivan Show that night in rapt anticipation. We'd already heard about this overhyped musical group with the funny-but-clever name called The Beatles, and the big attraction – their long hair – was what we wanted to see the most. In an era of buzz cuts and flattops – this was 1964, mind you – The Beatles were almost comically outrageous to our eyes. 

When their images appeared on the screen, we mostly kind of smirked, I think. The song they sang, "All My Loving," was incidental to us. For myself, I didn't know that much about music then, didn't follow any particular groups or singers. My folks were into show tunes, with my dad a big fan of a barbershop quartet, The Buffalo Bills. My parents actually saw them perform in The Music Man on Broadway. Suddenly, the Bills were constantly on our console turntable. That's what we listened to. And maybe some jazz that dad liked. Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz. Mom leaned toward the classical, although she'd listen to current radio. Meanwhile, I flipped baseball cards and ho-hummed my way through adolescence.

The Beatles performed two more songs in that opening set, including, ironically, "Til There Was You" from The Music Man, and then, unforgettably, "She Loves You," with the iconically relentless hook "Yeah, yeah, yeah" that has been identified with The Beatles forever after. Later in the show, they sang "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand." Wow. Who else could pull off five songs on Ed Sullivan? The Beatles seemed like they were having a good time that night. It's hard to believe that was 57 years ago, but a cultural milestone had clearly been carved.

My world immediately changed the next day when I went to school. I was laboring through seventh grade at an age when I was halfway scared of and halfway curious about girls. But the girls on that Monday morning could talk about nothing but The Beatles. They passed notes to each other. They giggled. They drew stick-figure pictures of their favorite Beatle, all the while proclaiming they loved Paul or John or George or even that goofy Ringo. The Beatles 4-Ever, they wrote to each other. I didn't get it.

I didn't get it for a couple years until I had a girlfriend who was also a Beatles fan. Then I started listening. I started tapping my foot to Ringo's beat, I started bobbing my head to the melodies. The lyrics struck home. "Help", "Yesterday", "Norwegian Wood", "Eleanor Rigby", "Penny Lane" and "Michelle" had caught my attention. In 1967, I had a summer job at the community swimming pool, when Sgt. Pepper hit the airwaves as well as the pool's PA system, and I was reeled in like a 20-pound bass in a fishing tournament. I finally caught up to them in real time.

•  •  •

The years rolled by. 

I bought books about The Beatles. I watched the documentaries and anthologies. I bought all their albums and then bought all of their CDs. You could track their obviously steady progression as artists from album to album, each one going a little step further than the last.

On April 4, 1964, they had the top five hits on the Billboard Top 100: "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Please, Please Me." Seven other tunes of theirs rounded out the Top 100 that day. Phenomenal.

All totaled, they had 20 No. 1 hits, basically from 1964 to 1969. About three a year. Get out of here. All while indelibly changing the recording industry with their overdubs, multitracks and tape loops.

•  •  •

I bring all of this up because I've been engrossed by Peter Jackson's recent three-part series The Beatles: Get Back. Jackson culled over nearly 60 hours of archival footage from the Let It Be sessions, filmed by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg in 1969, which more or less documented the breakup of the band. Jackson's work shows some of that, but even more remarkably the footage he selected puts on display the incredible songwriting process behind The Beatles.

Mostly, that process appears to be the result of inspired improvisation. Just a group of friends gathered around each other strumming away. No written notes. In fact, The Beatles could not read sheet music. They wrote down their lyrics, but not their melodies. Somehow, the music just poured out of them. Freely. Irresistibly. They knew their chords and chord progressions, but did they know music theory? Does it even matter?

As the film shows, many of the tunes we know now were identifiable right from the get-go. Some of the songs they were working on for Let It Be (they had a self-imposed deadline to create and practice 14 songs over a three-week span that were intended either for television or a live concert) ended up in the Abbey Road album or on George's epic All Things Must Pass. George was already becoming a prolific songwriter in his own right, maybe even moreso than John at this point. He'd already had "Something" well in the works, and "Here Comes the Sun" was about to rise a few weeks hence in Eric Clapton's garden.

Some of the songs developed out of simple nonsense vocalizing. Paul's "Get Back" started off as a protest against anti-immigrationists, and particularly of the views of Parliament xenophobe Enoch Powell. I wish the song had been published as such instead of in its familiar final form because it would be so timely in today's world. It was edgy and on point.

That said, the documentary may not be for everybody. The first and second parts are each three hours long, and unless you are a dedicated Beatles fan, there may not be much, if any, mystery or intrigue to be found here. The first part took place in spacious Twickenham Film Studios, the second part at newly-created Apple headquarters on Savile Row. The only action essentially comes from conversation, harmony and guitar, drum or piano riffs.

But that's more than enough. If you are an authentic Beatles fan, this film is pure, unalloyed gold. We're allowed to sit in with them via some stunningly vibrant video footage: we become almost as ever-present as Yoko. And it's not all gloom here. Sometimes the sessions are joyful. Sometimes wistful. Sometimes humorous. Sometimes awesome.

There is a touch of sadness here, too. John is murdered just 10 years after this documentary is filmed. George dies in 2001 of lung cancer that had spread to his brain. In some ways, we are watching holy ghosts perform.

But, my gosh, how young they all looked in this footage. Not one of them had of yet turned 30. They're just kids. Incredibly talented kids.

My own Beatlemania actually continued a few weeks before Jackson's work debuted when Kim purchased Paul's "The Lyrics" for me as an early Christmas present. The two-volume set offers Paul's thoughts on many of his Beatle creations as well as many of his Wings tunes and in its way is just as revealing as Jackson's film in detailing Paul's songwriting process. 

This is also Paul's opportunity (he's now 79 years old) to set the record straight (okay, pun intended) as he sees it. His collaboration with John on every song they wrote as Beatles was always tagged as a "Lennon/McCartney" tune, thus forming a timeless partnership as recognizable and substantial as Rodgers and Hammerstein or Gilbert and Sullivan, to name two. 

But in "The Lyrics", Paul declares "McCartney/Lennon" if he is the principle writer of a particular piece. This makes perfect sense to me. John, for example, had no input at all on "Yesterday", so why should the credit line go to Lennon/McCartney? Is McCartney a victim of his own ego here? Is he justified? Perhaps, perhaps not. 

So what?

To this day, I still have my occasional Beatles binge sessions, listening to two or three of their albums in a single sitting. By now, I've become a discerning listener. Sometimes I try to isolate Ringo's drumming, to follow in my head his beat and his fills. Sometimes I'll focus on George's lead guitar and appreciate how he grew as an artist and a musician while introducing synthesizers and sitars to the band. I appreciate the seemingly effortless and precise harmonies they emulated, with a nod, toward the Everly Brothers. I recently discovered, more than 50 years later, the simple finger snaps of John, George and Ringo at the end of Paul's "Here, There and Everywhere" and I almost shouted with glee at the revelation.

Imagine that. Jumping out of my chair and shouting with glee at The Beatles. The Beatles 4-Ever.

Here we are again

Kim went into her Einstein mode the other day. 

I mean, true, she's a bright woman who offers plenty of deep, independent and original thinking that features some interesting perspectives of her very own. So it was no surprise to me when she boldly stepped into the slipstream of the time-space continuum:

"I can't believe Thanksgiving is here already," she sighed, looking ahead to Thursday. "Do you feel that way? I don't think I'm ready for it."

The subliminal message here is that if she's not ready for Thanksgiving, then it follows that she's not ready for Christmas, either. The first Sunday in Advent, after all, is only a week away. Already, some early Christmas decorations have sprouted up in the neighborhood that greatly support her early arrival hypothesis.

But to get back to Thanksgiving.

I tried to answer her, relying on my age (I'm nine years older than she) as the voice of experience.

"When you get older," I said, using my own best Einstein impression, "time seems to go faster."

You know. E equals MC squared. She ignored me, I think. Probably wisely.

She started ticking off all the stuff that has to be done, even though we're still unclear what's going to happen Thursday. We usually have a family gathering, but Covid could scotch that for a second straight year. Or we might just stay at home and fix our own meal. Kim prepares a great turkey breast in the crockpot, and her dressing and sweet potato casserole are to die for. There might even be a pumpkin pie out there. She inherited all her mother's cooking skills, which is why I'm in the gym every day.

We've barely done any Christmas shopping, but we avoid Black Friday like the plague. We'll probably do the boutique thing, filling out our gift list with Mrs. Hanes cookies, or finding somewhere that offers scented candles and soaps. Maybe a bottle of wine or two.

This pretty much all happens the Saturday after Thanksgiving but the Sunday before Advent.

So, unless the arrival of Thanksgiving is already on your radar, then, yes, I guess it does get here pretty fast.

Try not to get caught in the slipstream.

Storming the beaches

Thanks to Covid, it had been two years since we last went to the beach.

I suppose we could have gone before now, but we didn't want to take the risk. We'd heard all the horror stories about the unmasked hordes at the beach and just who was – and wasn't – vaccinated.

Kim poses with her turkey (it's not me).

 We'd even purchased tickets to see The Beach Boys (what's left of them) at Alabama Theater. We bought the tickets in advance back in May when the Covid crisis seemed to be waning, but then the Delta variant popped up heading into autumn, so we cancelled our date for October. We really didn't want to be in a sold-out venue sitting next to somebody shoulder-to-shoulder who was unmasked and spewing along to "Good Vibrations" at the top of his infected lungs.

But then the Veterans' Day weekend came along, and so did opportunity. Kim and I are both fully vaccinated and boostered, so we felt relatively comfortable going to Cherry Grove. On Thursday, we hit the road.

The weather was perfect. The only drawback was that there was some glitch in the cable system where we were staying and, consequently, we had no television. I am a child of the '50s who grew up on television. Howdy Doody. Sky King. Roy Rogers. Superman. Ovaltine. I've probably watched something on the tube every day of my life for the past 65 years. I often turn the screen on just to give me background noise, even if I'm in another room and not watching anything. I'm kind of pathetic that way. I probably came this close to going into withdrawal. (I wonder if there's an approved program for television addiction?)

But guess what? I brought a John Grisham book with me. I had the Internet on my phone. Kim and I had complete and uninterrupted conversations. We were happy to be there. Kim actually shed a few tears of joy as we entered the Cherry Grove town limits for the first time in two years. "I never thought I'd be back," she sniffed.

As it turned out, we were at the beach for about 44 total hours, but we packed a lot of stuff into a short amount of time. We ate a great meal at Dockside in Calabash, followed by our traditional stroll through Callahan's emporium. On Friday, we took in Broadway at the Beach, Barefoot Landing, the Tanger Outlets on Hwy. 17, and Books-A-Million at a nearby mall. 

I don't know how we did it. Neither one of us took a nap on either day.

We even walked the beach for an hour or so. That's something we hadn't done in years. I didn't even mind the sand in my shoes.

Then we wrapped up the day with a wonderful deck-side meal at Molly Darcy's Irish Pub, watching the tide roll in and the sun roll out.

It was all nearly perfect. We got away and cleared our heads. I don't think it'll be two years before our next visit.

Look. There really is an Atlantic Ocean.