Tag Archives: William Blake

Eddie Van Halen. This One Hurts.

08 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Eddie Van Halen smiled like a kid when his hero gave him the thumbs up. He smiled like he saw the love of his life across the room. He smiled like he was up to sumpthin… who me? Oh, yes, you. Then he serenaded or assailed you with the wit of his strings.

There can be only one. And that is cliche. But tonight that’s how it feels when I think and write about Eddie Van Halen. A friend asked for a best memory with a Van Halen song involved.

I’m not sure how I got the cassette (probably borrowed from a friend or my brother). Popped it into the Sears stereo. Heard “Eruption” and just … Did you ever hear a piece of music and wonder what just happened to you? What the hell just happened to me? Never heard anything like it. I’m an 80s Mtv grrl, so I’ve seen a lot (oh my word a lot) of videos. When I went back to wash in Van Halen just now, most of what I see is Eddie playing like “this is kidstuff and I’m having fun.” He played with a joy, a playfulness I haven’t seen in many other bands. He had a guitar made for his creativity because he needed something more, which is not surprising. Many creatives have to have things built or changed for them so they can CREATE because what is in the here and now is just not filling and satisfying. I want us all to smoke that cig and take a swig and write that thing, that easygoing swagger that’s easy as breathing, breathing pie. Eddie, no one is like you. But we gotta try.

When Reality Forces Our Hands

11 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

2017.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It’s a heady day of reflection and mourning the innocent and the heroes who ran to instead of away from.

Friends and writers (friends who are writers? writing friends? oh hell, people who mean a great deal to me) have shared some thoughts with me today.  One sent me the lyrics to a Phil Ochs song. Another shared the story of the antichrist written by a man who “switched faiths” from Anglican to Catholic.  The deeper I delve into who these people are, seeking context, discovering who they might have been at the time they wrote what no one could ever stop from coming into being, creative hands that needed to sing their worldviews to the rooftops, the more tired I become.

Passion requires energy from those who create it and those who are drawn to the light. Tired dreamers are not comatose, they arise, awake, and continue to splatter pages with the truth as they see it, and with hope that someone will hear their hearts shouting and make a change.

The deeper I delve into context I am rewarded with new thoughts and more places to go, stimulated, but I also feel another stone in my pocket. Sorrow for their pain. Wonder. Hope for my own flagging pen, life, and world. I, like them, will write this world into a world that makes sense, one that is loving, brimming with hope and love and fullness!

It all leads me back to William Blake. I will imbibe him for the remainder of the day.  He was an artist and prophet, and I believe his traumas and empathy was stretched to breaking. It is part of what brought him to design and create a personal mythology, one that he had to share, could not not share, as one whose oxygen mask is on goes running into the crowd asking everyone, “Come! Partake!”

We are forced to write, to create, when the world is not behaving the way we see fit. It’s the only way we can make sense of it. We cannot remain silent. It goes against the creative nature.  Long may it remain so.