barry chern – ChernHaven

a bit of a berk

So, I awakened from a dream with most of the conversation dissolving into mist as they so often do, but I could still hear one of the characters saying, “Well, he’s kind of a berk, you know.”

Now, “berk” is not a word I have ever used, nor did I know the meaning or origin or proper spelling or if it was even really a word. So, why was this person in my dream saying it? I had a sense that it was some sort of English insult and felt compelled to look it up. Well, turns out I was right about spelling and country of origin; but from there it gets kind of complicated.

It involves “rhyming slang”, which I have never been able to get my head around. It is a secret language which apparently everyone knows in which a word is replaced with a longer phrase ending in a rhyme for the secret word. In this case it is further complicated by having turned into a shortened version of the phrase which does not even include the rhyme. The complete phrase is “Berkeley Hunt.” (The most famous of British fox hunts.)

Further, fahther, the meaning has become a milder insult than the word which it supposedly stands in for which is itself a much milder and more common epithet in England than in these parts, pardon the expression.

Know what I mean, Vern?

Tonight’s walk story

One, two, one, two, it shouldn’t be that hard. Left, right, left, right. Lub, dub, lub, dub. I’ve been hearing about that since I was a kid, at least since those nuts at Disney put out Hemo the Magnificent when I was 7. Flip, flap, flip, flap; a night runner goes by across the street to further illustrate and orchestrate.

A few blocks back, as I reminded myself to look at the dark sky and tree silhouettes and be more present, I remembered how I used to think about how painters never seemed to get that dark blue right, how it was my calling, how maybe I should get around to that again, I realized as my head was scratched by some low and naked tree limbs that maybe I was being present in the wrong place.

Lub, dub, lub, dub. I should be able to do that, been doing it all my life. Maybe this advanced poly-rhythm my heart started seeking, that may be tiring me and that the docs don’t like, is all part of the ascent to a higher realm. An existence further into the stratosphere of the fractal edges of the rhythm of life. If you look closely at those edges, zoom in, there’s always a basic pattern if you dig down far enough. It just seems like dissonance when so zoom out and see them all piled up and cramming in next to each other.

Another night walker at a tangent, as if to illustrate the obviousness of the tiring/weakening part, asks (just as I’m starting to compose this story in my head) if I’m alright. “Yeah, just at the end of three or four miles, trying to get home.” “Well, you’re almost there. Keep your head down and power through,” says he with a little fist pump. Yeah, I need to keep my head down while keeping my head up. And, it turns out, maybe I needed to hurt that side of my skull to balance out the aching and swelling on the other side of the head/face/teeth all day.

up,down, up, down…

another episode, same old characters

I had a remarkable unplanned encounter
with my old sweetheart the Moon;
I was just heading back from the usual little 
walk down the hill to the store.
Barely a few houses up Olentangy Street
I happened to look up for a glance;
But my look was captured, our lights were linked
and my feet froze to the cement.

Heavy cloud cover seemed to part
just in that one bright circle.
And though the dark grey continued to roll
from the south, with a chill breeze in step
down here below, we both stood engaged
the dark edge would advance but at last moment part
just enough to leave that one circle uncovered
slowly growing as stretched by our gaze.

I stood waiting for coverage, but the parting went on
Until a larger space shown with clear blue around
and subtle grey circles in the overall black
radiated out an enlarging sphere pattern.

Although the moon has promised to help
my vision if I remember to gaze
there still was a little lack of focus
and double-vision projection below.
This made it seem like the moon had a chin
and the space in-between gave it a grin.
As the moons parted and the old familiar
features of my friend sharpened, the double
moved down into a long white beard.

Eventually, of course, the chill of the sidewalk
Moved up through both the thin soles and thick socks
And I had to break off and move along, dizzy.
When I looked up again, the features were blurring
And the blue space was smaller, though it grew as I watched.
We continued this way as I went up the hill.
As the walking got longer, moon's features grew dimmer;
angry memories returned of the last time we talked,
and the words that as usual got stuck inside me.
Looking up from the bridge at the top of the hill
dark black swirls had moved to the fore.

New Page: the 1974 song list revisited videos

another night or day

I got to a pretty good state for awhile yesterday waking up after midnight and going from the endless night of despair into the day instead of trying to get up in the afternoon in despair and seeing things just get darker.

I thought maybe I was on the right track. But, waking up at 3 a.m. today (a favorite time of day) it seems just too dark. I think I was having one of those dreams that was just a true and graphic account of my lack of place in the world. Maybe it was better yesterday when it was all running and hiding and people being shot in the head.

But the part I remember was ending on a somewhat lighter side of trouble. After all, I found a place to pee for a change (well, it was off a sidewalk, but I didn’t think anyone was around), and did so quite easily. (I thought maybe because my penis was particularly short at the time.) So the walk was going along okay into the grey color field, skies and sidewalks and buildings.

But a vehicle starts pacing me, then falls behind, and someone is talking.. I have to turn around to see that it’s a cop car. What luck. He wants to know what’s going on or something, I say “you tell me. what do you want?” Well, it turns out he doesn’t say anything about indecent exposure, or anything of a legal nature as far as I can tell. He’s just harassing me about my life in general, and leading to, “You let yourself go bald.” As I was trying to say in a scoffing tone (don’t talk back to the cops, kids) “That’s not something one has much choice about” I woke up. And here we are, with the imaginary correspondents again.

the afternoon before the evening of

Heavenly Blue Peak
Shrouded in smoke and ashes
May flavor return

r.i.p Noah Shull

so, I said to my cat, (instead),
no I’m not mad at you;
yes, you can live here, that’s just fine;
you stay with me, you and all the spirits.
Maybe I could have said that to Noah
Maybe I could have said that to Pete
Maybe they would have been too much for me to handle, let alone help;
but what good am I if not the last refuge of the lost musicians
who kept washing up on my
sure
If not the one who brings the bad trippers out and down
Pete, Noah, Chris… well, I did harbor Pearcy for some time, years ago. But, then I didn't.
Why couldn’t I take them all in, and work the magic
write the magic words on the magic almonds
that transfer the people’s disease into me
and then I just shake it off, like I do.
See me shaking? yeah, it will be over soon.
Shaking it right off.
So I had a rough decade or so after allegedly saving that last tripping stranger’s life.
I’m sure it was just a coincidence.
probably.
Maybe I did, just now, say it
to all of them, all the spirits
in or around the cat.
The cat is trying to speak for all, he says.
Is that what he said? I keep getting it all wrong.
All right. Alright.
Oh, Glory. Glory, Glory. All Glory, all the Time
time, time

‘Oh, Glory’

Pete in ’63

This is just a little promo video for this amazing concert video I watched last night. Well, this morning actually. I suppose I should have taken a break in the middle and gone to bed around sunrise but I got caught up. This is Pete at what I think of as a peak for him. He was just beginning to become one of the biggest influences on my life, although almost entirely excluded from American media. He had only recently had his Federal prison sentence for contempt of Congress commuted. I was starting to hear his concerts through Folkways records I found in the basement of the Grandview Library, along with copies of the hard to find Sing Out! magazine in which he had a regular column called Johnny Appleseed, Jr. A new contract with Columbia Records, his first major label since the Weavers got blacklisted in the early ’50s while they were top of the hit parade, resulted in a great Carnegie Hall concert recording from this same year, but I never imagined there would be a way to actually see him performing. At the time he was blacklisted from the TV show named after a phrase he and Woody had made popular. I wonder how it would have affected me at 13 to see him as a human rather than just a disembodied voice and some dramatic still photos. Standing alone in the middle of 3,000 people who sing along reluctantly, and for some apparently cynically, at first; but by the end transformed into an emotional choir. He closed his show, before encores, with a song by “a young friend” of his, Bob Dylan. (Pete was a member of The Old Guard of folk music, 44 years old here.) “A Hard Rain…” Bob’s own record of it had barely been released when Pete did it at Carnegie Hall, and I don’t think it was being heard that much yet. If people knew of Bob at all, it was as a guy who wrote some Peter, Paul and Mary hits, but sounded too funny to actually listen to. It was interesting to see that Pete was still using crib notes on it here. He wasn’t reading it, no music stand nonsense, but you can see him glancing down at his feet between lines to check what came next.

One thing that weirdly stuck out to me, having had my ears ruined by the age of electronic tuners, was that he was never quite in tune through the whole concert. He would take a few seconds to tune, usually not the string that I was noticing was bad, but he didn’t obsess about it. Went from Drop D to standard on the 12-string, kept moving the capo up and down sometimes in the middle of a song when he decided it was not in the best key for everyone to sing, and therefore having to change the 5th string on the banjo. It seemed so obvious to me during the brief attempt at tuning that he hadn’t got it. But, he just charged right on, and once he got going it really didn’t matter a bit.

That studio clip where he is chopping the log was during a long segment on some TV show devoted to a salute to Leadbelly. After he finishes chopping through the work song, he looks up at the camera and says “Well that’s a ridiculous thing to do on TV, isn’t it? It doesn’t belong on a screen! Well, face it, folk music doesn’t belong on a stage, either.” Then he goes on and chops along to a film of Leadbelly doing “Take This Hammer.”

It’s just such a fascinating contradiction how he continually had massive success in industries he considered essentially wrong, and made a virtue of it.