Delusion and grace

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein

Albert, did you leave us a theorem, a formula, an equation for solving the mystery of compassion? A theology professor once told me knowledge changed behavior, using the example of grass. Ever since he learned how slowly a patch of grass regains vitality after feet press it to the ground, he could not bring himself to cut freestyle across the quad. He was a principled man, more disciplined than I or most mortals. I know or can know in a key stroke how many babies die of AIDs or malaria in the time it takes to finish this sentence...

This is the kind of discussion that makes you twitch and turn the radio to a happy song in a major key. It's more fun to enjoy life than embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty, right?

Unless you choose to explore your world. Yes, one of the most self indulgent vices turns out to be the most humane. Real art, the kind where delving is second nature and honesty can't help itself, sets you on a course of no return. At first you find out the accumulation of stuff holds no allure, except for the materials of creation. Then you notice you have nothing to say in pleasant conversations about the us and the them. You lose your ability to interpret that language. Gradually you rearrange your work and play to cram so much creativity into the horn, priorities shift. And finally? I don't know the finally, I only know I have fewer boastful, envious, competitive reactions to life when I'm bringing new songs into the world. I can't say why, but I do know this is taking me toward a wider embrace of the people, the nature of my planet.

Albert's not here to advise or dissent. Except in the artist sensibility of his bequest.

Talisman

A dream. A mountain girl in a weathered schoolhouse. She is pretty and plain of clothing and hair, unbothered by fashion, blocky of build but not ungraceful. Her teacher is a poet laureate, a Shirley Jones kind of disciplined beauty with cropped hair and regal cheeks. The dame is sure of her talent only so far as others revere it.

Two gents, white haired, patient, sit in the classroom, observing the girl. One tells the other he is captivated by her writing. Both speak of her as of the Christ in second coming. The first man is certain that, when her writing ripens, she will be a master. Her thoughts are otherworldly, her words natural as her hair, pure as her mountain skin.

There is more adventure. The young woman would rescue her kin in a helicopter over which she has ungainly control. It becomes clear she is a kangaroo! -- loping, flatfooted, tail a-thwap against the hardtack earth in her cumbersome rush to save the weak. I awaken early to this sweet image of birth and recognition, duty and innocence, torch passing and gravitas.

I often dream less hopeful. I flee the nights' calamities, I search for burning answers. I wake up spent. Is the mind a reflection of the world? Jung's collective underworld, perhaps? Is a savior coming? Is she here, evolving? Are we not as doomed as nightmares, in the mind and in the news, portend?

Stay tuned to the sub subconscious. She will lope across this dearth and save your soul.

Darrow's sorrow

Don't be my knight in shining armor.
How can I love you if you hide away?
Armor will not protect your lady
from lovers' sorrow by light of day.
-- words & music © Susan Weber

In muted awe, two small boys stare at polished exoskeletons in the museum's famed armor court. Even stallions wore protective hardware, back in the day. A helmet cannot speak, eye slits cannot weep, chain mail does not groan its stories of frustration and defeat. As agonies of labor fade away when babies slide into the brightness, these knights in shining pose survival of the fittest's bloodless testament to life.

Here is the outfit that may save your torso from extinction in the Baghdad games today:

helmet 3.5 lbs
helmet cover .2 lbs
ballistic eye wear .2 lbs
outer tactical vest 8.4 lbs
front and back protective inserts for tactical vest 10.9 lbs
side protective inserts for tactical vests 7 lbs
M-16 rifle with attachments 9 lbs
gloves .3 lbs
magazines with ammunition 13.7 lbs
pouches 1.9 lbs
knee and elbow pads 1 lb
green smoke grenades (2) 4 lbs
hydration system with water 6.3 lbs
first aid kit 1 lb
combat assault sling .4 lbs
bayonet 1.3 lbs
fragmentation grenades (2) 4 lbs
earplugs with case .1 lbs
radio 1.1 lbs

Seventy four point three pounds. How many babies could you carry to their mamas' breasts if someone said this battle's over, shed your armor plate, rejoin the living? Maybe just one, you, the knight who dare not cry so long as tournament kings have summoned curators to hold their banners high.

You don't need armor plate to
be charming in this place to
close the space between us if you choose to.
Don't be my knight in shining
Don't be my knight in shining
Don't be my knight in shining
be my knight for real.
-- words & music © Susan Weber

Banyan

When I was smaller than just about everything, I reached up for the cup on the TV. Grabbing me, my hand, the cup and (quite loudly) my attention, my mother averted a scalding and a scarring more vivid than this memory. I was astonished, as I dangled in her trembling arms, to see the cup brimmed with black coffee when just yesterday, hadn't I picked raisins out of the same cup, set on the table my Grandpa made?

'Be careful' is the prayer good parents speak to childrens' dreams and dangers. Strapping gas masks on his children as scud alarms blared, my Israeli friend said, 'the worst fear a parent can feel is not being able to protect your children.' We build our fences tall and strong around the innocent.

To err is human; even air can suffocate the child. Howard Hughes' mother warned him the typhus would take him if he strayed into the village. The only latitude she left him was up -- his safest love, the sky. He who feared the ordinary door knob engineered commercial planes for earthbound citizens, that parents might tremble anew.

What does it take for a person, or a people, to be free? There is a banyan tree on a virgin island. Its branches dangle earthward, taking root. This tree with a thousand trunks will never leave its real estate. It is worthy of a picture and a picnic in its shade. At dusk, the sun adorns it with a silver tiara. Protected by the government, it shall never be a mast or a guitar or plough or a girl's small table, holding raisins.

Brainbeats

One spring day, a coke in hand, sunglasses on my nose, I go to the zoo with second graders. Mid bus trip, my mind slips into surreal waters; children, parents, movements, sounds become more fluid. Kids lean over seats and teachers laugh at the wide highway, driver hunched and steady -- we are immersed in the opulent dance.

I have this feeling another time with a crowd of New Yorkers steaming full throttle down Broadway. Our symphony moves from light to light, beat to beat, rest to rest, with each player's unique touch on the instrument.

I wait with a sick child in the emergency room. I used to work here. Nurses and doctors buzz past each other, or stop to discuss, buzz to the next bedside or chart the night's fandango on a giant board. Or is this a team of coaches splashing game plans on the wall? When I was the suited worker, I was too invested in minutiae to feel the game unfolding.

I'm in this zone again with three artists painting images and sound on a canvas known as Crooked River Groove. We know and do this job: perform our music on a stage. Our live audience consists of engineers who document our show. Four cameras roll across the studio, the sound board hums. I find a silent grace in the TV crew's concerted movements. Their calm intensity draws me out beyond the bounds of nervousness or self-regard. Their sphere of creativity incapsulates and magnifies my own. Our host, Professor Wiggins, tells us we've done well connecting with the electrons -- a worthy phrase for all the times where time is nearly still, slow motioning the neurons in our minds to span millennia as every true performance tends to do.

Dot matrix

A woman goes to work, to school, to dentist, grocery store and church. She takes her kids to lessons, calls her parents from the waiting room or her sister from the car. On the side she's filming documentaries on the homeless, sending screenplay rewrites to an LA producer. Her husband stirs the soup and shovels snow or paints the house.

In a non flick of the keyboard, her life is changed. An email she's about to delete stops her cold. I'm watching you is the subject; she starts to read, prepared to sift through bogus hype and a link she won't pursue. Instead, the sender is uncannily acquainted with her life, noting every detail. For however long it takes to read the swimming text, she does not breathe. When a parched white rasp escapes her throat, her eyelids pinch to black denial. How long? How much? How possible? How wrong... how... wrong... how...

"We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere," says Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots - analyzing and aggregating them - in a way that we haven't thought about."

Dive and swim

Former USA poet laureate Rita Dove recommends a regular reading workout:

When you read, you become bold, you identify with the characters, the Brothers Karamazov, you start carrying them around. Or Odysseus. Or one of the characters in Langston Hughes. A kind of inner boldness builds up.

Over half of today's library circulation, she laments, is from video rental. Coaching us to read more, watch less, she wonders if the 'passive' entertainments are like empty calories:

It's not nourishing. We're starving.

This is not good news. We're getting flabby in the fanny and between the ears? What's next to finish us off completely? Soul steroids? Psychotropic fudge busters?

Here's my un-pulitzered laureate-less recipe for health and well being. Get sweaty with a pen*. Find what's in you; dig it out. Reading builds inner boldness? That's good, but writing disciplines your boldness. And writing is not so hard, if you have the will. As Rita Dove explains:

I look out at the world as a writer, someone trying to bring everything we can't articulate into some kind of language. It deals with a lot of silence, and a lot of patience to bring those silences out.

I leave you with one last wellness tip: publicize your work; let the gimlet eye relieve you of your bombast. Shed your bluster on the mud room floor; your reader steeps the tea, awaiting you.

*a metaphor for your excavating tool of choice

Moon below the masthead

Front page and center Cleveland Plain Dealer -- odd placement for the sci fi book jacket, no? Small faces gape at a huge shimmering moon with crescent chin, sloped nose and lowered lashes. Over this photo hangs a quote:

Since the day of the operation, I have a face like everybody else.

I tear my eyes from the picture and leave for work, baffled. The full featured moon conjures up Virgin Mary's face discovered on a steelyard's rusted tankard 50 miles from no place. Devotees flock to see her.

And the caption.

Since the day of the operation, I have a face like everybody else.

Here's where the sci fi kicks in. Aliens with laser toys replace pockmarked Man in the Moon with smooth Lady Luna -- quite the operation.

The debate about intelligent design and evolution comes to mind. I wonder if both explanations of our origins will some day seem as strange as alien invasions in front page stories. What if Darwin's theories end up like some of Galileo's, eclipsed by Einstein? I revere the scientists, disciplined visionaries of matter, space and time. They forbear the nudgy matron saint of factoids, hold the world accountable to proof. They pack a spare cerebrum full of data. But surely every good professor knows she's but a footprint on the Everest.

And what explains the picture in the paper? A story of an ordinary earthling, Isabelle Dinoire, and her doctors who stitched a stranger's chin where hers had been -- and cheeks, and lips and nostrils. My moon is her projection, my aliens her surgeons, my bafflement her miracle evolving.

Degrees of freedom

Maureen Dowd met with the Saudi ambassador at his embassy across from the Watergate last week. Condoleesa Rice lives in the Watergate. There's a little grocery in her building, an escalator ride down from street level. I kept a lookout for our well-heeled Secretary of State when I was there; maybe she'd pick up a can of soup or a pork chop after a long day at the White House. She never showed. Was she eating Chinese take-out with her staff, strategizing her next global jaunt?

And the Saudi ambassador -- does he ever drop by the Watergate grocer to satisfy a chocolate craving or buy the jumbo bag of navel oranges? They're pretty good this time of year. I guess he's got underlings to do that for him.

The Saudi royal daughters are educated in DC from the safety of the Saudi royal palace. There's a basement classroom at George Washington University decked out with TV cameras for the princesses' closed circuit enlightenment. Do they ever set foot in their market in Riyadh? Are their overseas calls monitored by dear daddy and his Arabian knights? What if the daughters get a Hershey's craving? Ahh... servants, right. Halliburton likely wheels a dessert cart down the palace corridors on schedule, mocha cherry cheese cake for all. And the neighborhood Halliburton contractor? Will he be kidnapped in Baghdad today, terror's post-it note? This would garner a story by the likes of foreign correspondent Anne Garrels, if she survives the drive from airport to hotel.

Thomas Friedman says there's a bill in congress to reduce US oil consumption through the use of alternative fuels and new technology. It's supported by key Republicans and Democrats in both houses. And if, between chocolate cravings and road trips to the mega mart two streets down we can fit it in, we are urged to contact our elected reps and tell them to vote it in.

Nano soundings

A man whose fevered will is to hear music again, specifically Ravel's Boléro, turns to the miniaturization of all things digital. He has a wee computer implanted in his ear. But the notes of Boléro via his cochlear implant do not ring true, compressed within the vocal range of normal talking. The man tracks down computer wizards who tell him his tiny computer's hardware can handle 10 times the software it's using. He wonders if Boléro could be waiting on the other side of his implant's 90% wasted capacity.

Another man, a conductor, also loves music. Trauma to his brain destroys his career, though his hearing is unaffected by the injury. The difference is this: now, the more exquisite the music, the more distressing it is for him to hear it. He describes it as too beautiful to bear. Four measures of Madame Butterfly make him nearly mad for the refuge of silence.

A woman who lives on a street abutting a city park complains to the police about the summer concerts piped into her home across the warm evenings.

'Mam, it's only an hour and a half every other week -- why don't you come out and enjoy the show?'

'You don't understand, I just can't stand music!'

'How can anyone hate music?' the concert planners mutter.

How can anybody love it so much it overloads his emotional receptors to the point of pain? How can a person need it so much, he beats at the gates of the tech gurus to learn their secrets?

The denouement of one man's cochlear odyssey is a recording, broadcast for the hearing public, of the music he imbibes with his new, vastly superior software upgrade. Pitch perfect, rhythm true, played by Schroeder on his toy piano -- by this diminutive Boléro the seeker is elated and reborn.

And lest we wax euphoric over miracles of science and the mind, we ponder this. A creature's testament to sculpted sound is richer than the bible, deeper than the River Styx, subtler than reason. Do you believe in god? Do you believe in music? Do you believe in haunted mansions? Do you believe at all?

Sanctified

I knew a man who felt he was a failure. He should have made a mark by now and here he was mid thirties, paying off his loans, chafing at his 9 to 5. He scorned stability like so much smut. Setting out to capture lost opportunity, hunter in a wild savanna, he thrashed through humans as through tall grasses, forgetting us as easily.

In a marshland near here, the cattails form a wide and tranquil unanimity in spring. You follow the wood walk to it's center to be swallowed up in a throaty lushness. By December, the boardwalk and walker are exposed, the stalks flattened in patterned chaos. Air marked by your breath echoes a silence only birds and distant cars embellish and you wonder at the choices of a lifetime.

The sameness of a stable life can groan against a writer's pure, clear sight and yet, one is not predictable, the other free. Chaos and serenity inhabit a bold anticipation, partners yearning for their opposites in timeworn visceral abandon.

Just US

Nana, who’s that lady comin’ up the sidewalk?

Oh that’s just somebody your uncle invited over to watch the game.

She got pretty hair.

I’m sure she does now Lucy don’t you be starin at her -- put the curtains back together.

What's that she got on her arm?

Honey, I don't have time right now, I'm fixin the nachos.

Pocketbook? Looks funny for a pocketbook.

Oh -- let me see -- no that's not a pocketbook, Lucy, it's a scale.

Like in the bathroom?

Not really -- it's more old fashioned. You see those two big platters? She can weigh two things out against each other on those.

Why?

I don't know why and you're askin too many questions. Now scoot.

....... . . . . . . .

Nana, uncle and his friends sent me to bring 'em some food.

Food? What do they think I'm doin in here, my nails? I'm gettin em food. Here, bring em in the Planters Delux.

How much do peanuts weigh?

Honey, you look on that jar and it'll tell you.

40 oz -- that's not enough.

Lucy, you try my patience to the moon -- not enough what?

They want heavier stuff.

Ohhh -- I got to stir this Velveeta or it'll scorch. Here, bring em in the Meat & Cheese Party Tray and some Nancy's Deli Spirals.

That's only 5 lbs plus 1.3 lbs -- I'll bring em the EZ Peel Shrimp too, 3 more lbs!

Lucy -- Lucy! I was not finished layin those out!

But uncle says bring in everything he got you from his club.

Lucy -- come back here... (that boy has never had an oz of sense in his body from the minute I borned him.)

Nana! Can I take the Belgian Mini Cream Puffs... and the Hillshire Farms Lit'l Smokies 5.5 lbs? And the Tyson Buffalo Hot wings brings it up to 9.5 lbs, and these Casa Di Bertacci Meatballs 6 lbs!

Lucinda -- what is going on in there? This is not normal.

Uncle's puttin this stuff on the lady's scale and everybody's laughin.

Oh that Samuel, never could hold his beer any length of time -- soon as I get this cheese warmed...

He's not holdin beer, Nana. He got a big bottle of that black stuff in his hand -- looks like motor oil.

Lucy, it is not motor oil, that's the prune juice. Your uncle's prone to blockage -- child, come back here with those Farm Rich Mozzarella Breaded Cheese Sticks!

4.5 lbs, Nana -- uncle says!

....... . . . . . . .


(winded) He says we need more.

What's all that hollerin -- they bettin on the game or what?

They're bettin on the lady.

The lady! Now this is getting ridiculous.

They're throwin money at her other plate, the one without the food, only it never sticks -- it flies back out. So now they're bettin how long she can hold up her scale all lopsided like that.

Lucy, tell your uncle when I get out there -- TAKE your hands off the Tostitos!

They want these Scoops and the Restaurant Style Pick 'n' Pack.

Now they're screamin like banshees. Poke your head out there and tell me -- who made the touchdown Lucy?

The lady, Nana, she's all crumpled over and Uncle's pilin the 50" HD Plasma TV and Panasonic DVD/VCR recorder on top of the 7 Layer Taco Dip (40 oz)!

You got that taco dip past me too?

Yes mam, when I grabbed the Mi Abuelo Fresh Salsa 48 oz.

Young lady -- !

Nana, we got to help her. She's bleeding.

Bleeding? All right honey, I'm hanging up my apron, look my hair is flyin every which way...

Hurry up, Nana, she's crying and they're laughing.

Lucy I am coming but you listen to me little girl, the lady is a full grown friend of your uncle's and if he asks her over to the Super Bowl I'm sure she can plainly see --

No she can't, Nana.

No she can't what?

She can't see.

What are you talking about sweetheart?

She's blind, Nana. Didn't I tell you? The lady's blind.

Murmers in their wings

Edwin Huizinga blogs from his tour with the Oberlin Orchestra in China:

While we play there is a constant hum from the audience that you can hear in the orchestra if there are really quite moments…they are whispering, asking questions to their neighbors, pointing, looking. It is an awesome experience for them. Some of them have never seen an orchestra perform before.

I have a theory about the audience that hums, literally or figuratively. Strangers become an audience when they trust their capacity for wonder. This is hard for people who are overloaded with opportunity. Their wonderment nerves are fried. It's not that they don't want to hum -- they really can't.

The Chinese listeners wonder so well, they have to ask. They nudge, they whisper, they hum themselves into an audience, they hum the musicians into an orchestra.

Enigma

Rapper 50 Cent:

I feel like a very attractive woman. A man becomes like an attractive woman when he's successful.

Thank you Mr. Cent you have just turned my wanton preconception of mankind's valuation of womankind on its head, not to mention my valuation of the machismo leanings of rap.

A very attractive woman knows her power. On a bad day she sends ripples of emotion, from reverence to envy, through the crowd. At her best, her face will launch a thousand ships. The twist for me is 50's choice of words. Beautiful praises attributes a woman's born with. Attractiveness is deeper. A woman captures my attention when she is in league with her creative spirit, with or without the accouterments of glamour. The very attractive woman (50 Cent may disagree) could be Mother Teresa emptying the bed pan, Judith Resnik in her jumpsuit, Whoopi Goldberg playing the skid row queen.

I'm not surprised the poet found this metaphor. I picture it sliding out of his subconscious in the heat of a press op. Women have more cultural license to lavish their attention on the so-called softer virtues -- spirituality, aesthetics, sensuality -- than do the stolid males. I wonder if the successful rapper, feeling like a very attractive human, knows this: it's the she wolf who personifies his freedom.

Smoke and mirrors

My lyrics and I adore electric guitars, effects boxes, drum kits and moxy rock and we abhor taking them out to smokey bars to play. But at this stage, we don't have many choices.

Tonight I gird my loins in machine washables to hear my friend play in one of the best listening venues of the land. John's impressive songs and sounds will permeate my insides and so will a whole lotta smoke. Then I'll go home, disinfect the hair and wardrobe and wonder how tomorrow's recording of vocals will fly, post smoke inhalation.

I went to the White Stripes' unforgettable show in the State Theater downtown Cleveland. Nobody smokes there -- the joint's too classy. Did the audience miss the foggy hipness of the rock club? Did we squirm in our velvet seats, gawk at the ornate ceilings? Hardly. Jack and Meg White obliterated our sense of space. They had us on our feet the whole time and who could notice anything but their art? I took deep gulps of exquisite sound waves cutting through clean air. It was delicious.

How much am I willing to sacrifice for the music I love? Until rock bands taste the big time, we play in 'clubs' (to spiff up the image a bit). It's a simple formula: alcohol sales=revenue=$ to pay the band. In Cleveland, smoke and alcohol are joined at the hip; health and music got divorced in Vegas way back when. You've got to prove yourself worthy of a better formula: a zillion avid fans=ticket sales=$ to pay the band (alcohol and cigarettes can go make out in the parking lot).

There's a statewide movement toward the clean indoor air embraced by Florida, California, New York City, Toledo & Columbus OH and even pub-rich Ireland. Meanwhile, musicians play the hazy halls: we love this music even more than health itself. Logic tells me our non-smoking listeners, who make the same sacrifice for their favorite bands, would gladly pay for a ticket to hear them smoke free. Bar owners tend to resist this formula -- the old one is so easy, if you suspend your better judgment long enough. The crusade is on to shed the obfuscation. Stay tuned.

Burnt umber

Jada Pinkett Smith compares fronting her rock band, Wicked Wisdom, with movie stardom:

In acting, you're basically someone else's paint on the canvas, which is cool. I enjoy that process. But in music, and in this particular genre, I can bring more of myself. I can say the things I want to say.

A Cleveland artist applies her paint to great effect. At a recent screening, local filmmakers introduced their cast and crew with much ado, thanking the paint that gave their movies life. Shahin worked alone on Born Lucky, a film about her son's deployment to Iraq with the British Royal Airforce. With no production team to introduce, she thanked her family for opening their lives to us. The film drew us in with close-ups of Neil, talking with his family on the eve of his departure. We followed him to Iraq and home again to be interviewed by his kind videographer mum. By film's end, we understood our role in the project: witness to change from innocent to veteran, carefree to careworn, open to guarded. We recognized the young man's paint, and ours, on the tragic canvas.

Public or private, we are the stuff of each others' imagination. Psychologists warn about projection -- the friend who paints her world and you in shades of envy, the child who gives you devil's features dipped in the sin of 'no.' We are painted as we paint.

I hear there is a Dave Matthews cruise where Dave and his band meet the cruisers on a tropical island. Picture yourself in the palmy theater; Gaugan soaks his canvas in the jam band's sound. If you are a fan, this could be paradise and I don't hear $100,000/concert DMB complaining about being the paint. Ah but I've tainted my handiwork with tell tale tinges of resentment. Forgive my crass vanity -- I can do better.

If there is a difference between paint and painter, it is in the mind. Consciousness melds discipline with intent in the imperceptible migration of hand to brush.

A slender line

As I looked for a link to Narnia, I happened on a site that opens playing music which will accompany you very well as you read this posting. If you'd like, open it in another window and then, keep reading...

How are you? I'm in my place of solitude on Saturday morning; all is still. I just finished the Saul Williams poem you gave me. At the end he says:

May these words bring worlds.

I smile -- there is only a slender line between words and worlds, a line the poet crosses like Superman merging through walls, Harry Potter in his invisibility cloak, Lucy finding Narnia within the wardrobe.

When we cross this lowly l, it becomes t, a symbol of sacrifice and redemption. It is the muse who beckons us across the void to a world of depth ignored by surface dwellers.

I know she calls you through literature and music. Your generosity of spirit is her emplem and you wear it well. In truth you are an artist, passing into worlds beyond the present or the past, moving with the poetry of ancient bards, the wisdom of tomorrow.

These words by Marc Chagall revere the artist's vigil:

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

I look forward to talking with you again but in the meantime, I will see you on the ramparts, holding sway against the night.

Lunch-pail hilarity

Plain Dealer Style Editor Kim Crow's breaking news: pantyhose don't look modern.

Even if you ignore their stodgy status, there's the discomfort factor. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more irritating than the crotch of your hose creeping down to midthigh as you sashay through the office.

Crow's got the self-effacing savvy of comedic pro, Phyllis Diller, who explains why she often made fun of her looks on stage:

That's a good way to make friends with an audience, to let them know that you are not up there to show off, you're there to entertain.

The style maven, the comedian, roasting her pride over that eternal flame of humble passion known as art. This is not self-therapy on the audience's dime. This is an artist with an agenda à la Ani DiFranco:

I understand the use of humor in performance. You’ve got to get people laughing so their throats open up wide enough to be able to swallow something bigger.

The artist lures us with a promise of something bigger than other possible claims on our time. Anybody, especially a newbie to the public stage, can be tempted to squander her listener's time. This is something you really don't want to do.

Impetuous Paul Hackett, running against a 'lunch-pail-liberal congressman named Sharrod Brown' for the US Senate from Ohio got this assessment from Joe Klein:

In the end, Hackett seemed something new under the sun: a blogger candidate — all attitude, all opinions, very little information.

Ouch. Congratulations bloggers! You know you've entered the big time when the critics have you typecast. But the lunch-pail candidates (or bloggers) have no swagger rights either unless they aspire to be libraries, of which there are quite a few already. In order to deliver 'something bigger,' a writer, a politician, an entertainer has something to win over: an audience's precious time.

In writing as in performing, when I'm true to the call, my first audience is my own mind. Before anybody is even listening, I satisfy her discerning smile. Before anybody is even reading, I track her subtle yawn or burst of pride. I try to get her thinking, maybe laughing, and I never waste her time.

Moxy dames

At a Georgetown University speech, W's legal lickspittle ignored a few student protesters, but he might have learned something from their banner, emblazoned with words of Benjamin Franklin: 'Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.'

Maureen Dowd does have her way with words. I don't plan on positioning myself between the lady and her spittoon any time soon.

Elsewhere in the news, Carly Simon and Susan Sarandon support a documentary on Christa McAuliffe, the teacher who died in the 1986 Challenger explosion. Carly wrote a song for the film, Susan volunteered to narrate the life of the woman who said

I touch the future. I teach.

According to the film, pioneer womens' journals were required reading in Christa's classes to balance out male centered history books.

As for male centered reporting, today's Plain Dealer lead stories: Wayne Hill's addicted to his Blackberry and might get cut off, Governor Taft's approval rating has tanked, the B-52 bomber will not be set out to pasture quite yet and

Hamas, the militant Islamic party sworn to the destruction of Israel, won a large share of votes in the first Palestinian legislative elections in a decade, depriving the more secular Fatah party of its longstanding monopoly on power.

Continued on page 2 and here she is, her caption reading:

A supporter of the ruling Fatah party celebrates in Gaza City after exit polls were released following Wednesday's Palestinian elections.

Babushka covered hair, kafia draped shoulders, eyes squinting skyward, a Fatah supporter poised against the night, her right hand on the trigger, her left hand hefting the gun.

It's tempting to draw conclusions. Rather, I draw conclusions without thinking; it's tempting to write them here as though I have a clue about her world.

I'll tell you what I'm feeling. Regret. She wields a weapon. Awe. The photo doesn't blink. Humility. Conviction stands against the night. Dread. I feel the danger bearing down.

A leader of Hamas says this about the election:

The Americans and the Europeans say to Hamas: either you have weapons or you enter the legislative council. We say weapons and the legislative council. There is no contradiction between the two.

Dowd lampoons the beltway, Simon and Sarandon laud the teacher and a million lifetimes away, a nameless woman stands watch as leaders around the globe make speeches wedding governments to guns, liberty to surveillance and the future to a danger bearing down.

To blab or not to...

I'm sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to
write a shorter one. -- Pascal, 1657

A friend admires the brevity of my postings.

You've always been a good editor, speaking or writing. You choose your words carefully.

When I was growing up, this came off as shyness. While I paused to formulate my thought, conversationalists around me rippled along to new topics. As an adult I lived in Europe for a time. My hosts liked to tell this story:

Susan didn't say a word for a month; suddenly she was speaking in perfect German sentences!

Butchers cut both ways through language. Some would heap slabs on the plate, others whittle down through the blabber to the meat of the matter.

I don't always mind when people talk a lot. A woman at the pool, call her Flo, describes her recent correspondence with the swimsuit company regarding polyester vs lycra vs nylon or she might recite the transcript of a conversation with a stylist over beauty products and the challenges of hair and she doesn't stop for air she is our own suburban rapper; Flo flow filters through the locker room, her patter soothes us all.

Then again, word choice can blight or spark a conversation. This has to do with space. Conversation is the taking of turns. In spoken word, this is obvious. What about the noble pen?

Conversation asks a writer to be merciful to her reader, merciless with edits. Every time I cross out a word, I leave you space to respond. Ah but the words I choose can be fat and juicy, filled with imagery and innuendo. This is the poet's delight!

There is Flo, the worthy spigot. Along comes prose; the gold necklace on bare shoulders trumps the online catalog of rhinestone baubles any day. The merciful writer spends time teasing quality out from under the hassock.

From prose, poetry and songwriting split off in tandem. The poet chooses precious orbs of meaning. The songwriter merges poetry's sparse opulence with a slew of allegiances: to rhyme, rhythm, music, etc.

Well, if potent words, the fewer the merrier, is the goal, what about music? Potency sans words -- the muse's ultimate creation, no? You're talking to a wordsmith here so, no. Beethoven's a salty dog but I am in love with song.

My novelist cousin came to town on a book tour. I sat with her fans at a signing. One reader asked Ms. Weber how she captures pathos and hilarity in her spicy fiction. The writer said she's kept a personal word book since childhood. She writes down favorites for future reference. At this moment, my ugly duckling, word-infatuated lineage began to please me.

My approach to language is born of reverence for its power to express elegant thought. My friend Mim recently sent me the sweetest of praises:

I love the interview. You are a poet even when you are simply speaking.

Mim, you may be right. Then again, this is my longest posting to date. Duckling or swan, there is ever more to learn about the shy abundance of mercy.