Dan and Mary, Y'all have got me going. Mary about Texan drummers and Dan over women too good for us.
Dan, I know exactly what you describe and I think I know why it is that sometimes degenerate bozos like us end up with beautiful women. It's because of awareness. Pure and simple. There's nothing more obvious to a beautiful woman than her own beauty, and to have somebody in the world respond to that beauty, to see it, to smell it and love it, as you did and do Yoli, it's what makes that beauty real. Without an experiencer, the experience is hollow. Mary, the thing is when I think of Texas drummers I have an instant flash to the second time I cried and to why. His name was Reloj, and he was a drummer. Or he had been anyway. In his younger days. Now he was a school teacher in Alaska. Specializing in gifteder students (that means smart. I looked it up). I met him online. This was early days, around '95. Back when the whole 'net thing seemed like a real cool and new idea. Reloj and his brother were the main bossmen on a herd known as Nerdnosh. A story telling forum, started in Santa Cruz where Unka Timmie lived. An online attempt to organize people for saturday brunch, when online was still a new-fangled idea and it grew till I found it. Probably through an Alta Vista search. Over the next few years, we got to know one another and I really liked ole Reloj. He had the best stories. Like the time Bo Diddley's regular drummer gets taken sick and Reloj (the local opening act with his mates) gets asked to sit in and is doing fine when Bo suddenly goes to Reloj, "I wanna play yo drums" and Reloj, of course, relinquishes his seat to the celebrity, instead of saying what he later wished he'd said, "I wanna play yo guitar". Hah. Don't think Bo let's many people fondle Lucille, but the main point of the story, was how Bo screwed up his own famous beat, got on an offbeat that sounded terrible and as Reloj described it "a proper Texas band woulda compensated, twirled in a half beat on a 4/5 right after the break on the cycle" but these other guys were strictly "by the book" type men and it came out prety awful. But the story was entertaining as hell. He was a great person and a great story teller and a great guitar player and I never heard him play drums... But I bet he was great at that too. Got liver cancer and died the same year we lost Manzi and I think that was too much tragedy to write about for a while and I never wrote to Nerdnosh again. One night, I was reading along some of the back stories from before I'd joined the list, in the archives, heh, and I found a treatise of his on the reason for his life and his purpose, and it surprised me with how strongly it affected me. I found tears running down my cheeks over his description of the plight of the gifted. I know, right? But really. He nailed it. Why do school kids always hate the kid with the best grades and the highest scores? Why is that punishable by mocking and ostracism? Why is being smart a curse? To teachers, it's a pain, to fellow students, you ruin the bell curve. You're a "know-it-all" and universally hated. Reloj explained the pain of being smarter than your classmates, in way that touched my soul like here was finally somebody who understood me. He'd made it his life's work to appreciate smart kids and work with them and help them develop their minds. What a gift! Reloj was just a nickname. Means watch in spanish. Came from some obscure movie that had a lot of meaning to the two brothers. Tim had done a surprising thing, for a Texas nobody with not much but chutzpah propelling him. He darted across the continenent and hooked up with Carolyn Cassady for a while, based on some letters exchanged between Texas and Palo Alto. Timmie arrived and was for a short while, her much younger Texan boy toy, after Neal died on them tracks in San Miguel. When she kicked him out, he drifted to Santa Cruz and ended up with a cush job for the Veteran Service and wrote about his journeys and pursuits - another mad dharma bum set off by Kerouac searching for a beat that nobody else can express. Mary, you posted a youtube link to some heavy metal drummer, earlier on and I didn't want to disparage your taste or anything but ... barf? All that pound, pound, pounding. Frantic, pushing it like a frigging racer or weight lifter. No finesse. Yuck. I give Marsha all the credit for posting a link that will live in my mind for eternity as the ultimate piece of drumming artistry. Its famous, you've probably seen it a million times. Me too, because I always want to watch it again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbaDdHmj09c The youngest boy at woodstock and watch his face, his assimilation of a rhythm created by himself and his bandmates and his freedom yet adherence to the structure of that rhythm. And most importantly, his patience. It's the pauses, not the pounding. Knowing when to hold 'em, as a wise man once said. christ. forget I said that. Not that. Not this. Just listen without thinking. For Marsha's sake. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
