Amazing street find: oh, vinyl.

I finally went through the crate of records I found on the street. Actually it was two crates of records, put out with the piles of trash that are always on the sidewalk in front of (between?) the Williamsburg Projects near where I teach (surrounding where I teach, really). I consolidated them into one crate and hauled them two blocks to school and up a flight of stairs, where they've sat under my desk for the past three weeks. But I went through them yesterday, and lugged a bunch home today. YAY! A lot of them are just the vinyl with no sleeve, tragically scratched up, but so far they're playing...

Here is the list of ones I've listened to and made choices about, to be annotated further as I keep listening.

in the YAY pile
the afro house of Irma--"Afrodesia" vol. 2 (2 discs, AWESOME)
Culture Class in New York City: Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77 (some amazing, some a little too experimental for me, 2 disc set and I'm sad to only have one of them, but happy to have one of them, especially acquired this way!)

transferred from "not listened to" to "YAY"
something that I finally figured out must be this by putting the song titles into google because the label is ripped up [I'm so not a DJ]
and another Crib Remixes with a ripped label (???)
Disco Dave & the Force of the Five MCS (one song, 1980, Label "Mix Master Mike and Disco Dave Records") This starts out almost cringingly old school but gets better--again learned, some interesting stuff through google (here)

in the "no" pile
Tambi--"The House Music Anthem" (single)
Attitude--"We Got the Juice" (1983)

transferred from "not listened to" to "no" (also known as "don't really need it"--I'm about to move cross country again, after all)
Tyrone Brunson--"I Need Love" b/w "The Smurf" (single)


not listened to yet, but moving to another pile eventually, possibly with annotation:
Ursula 1000--"Beatbox Cha Cha E.P."
Rick James--"Street Songs"
Bad Boys featuring K Love--"Bad Boys" single
Norman Connors--"You Are My Starship"
Just.Ice--"Put That Record Back On" (single)
C-Bank--"One More Shot" (single)
Eric B. & Rakim "Let the Rhythm Hit 'Em" (single)
Special Request--"Salsa Smurph" single
"'Disco-fied' Rhythm Heritage"
Angela Bofill--"Angel of the Night
Soulmate--Summerland (single)
Sugarhill Gang--"Rapper's Delight"
DTrain "You're the One for Me" which I took because of the amazing cover, front and back--even though someone colored DTrain's teeth in with a blue ballpoint pen... (see pristine cover above)


and...
lots more that I don't have the time to write out now, but maybe while I'm listening to more I will continue the list... Obviously I know a lot of these records/songs/artists already, the question is whether they play and whether I need the vinyl. Oh, acquisitions. ARGH. Even those things acquired without expense--maybe especially these "amazing finds"--are more possessions to agonize over. And have I mentioned the impending move?!?!

...

This is the third large stash of records I've gotten in an interesting, random way. One day I was walking through my neighborhood and this huge old factory/warehouse on Dean had the doors open wide; some guy was selling the contents. I spent hours poking through hundreds of records, digging through junk... I culled and culled in order to only take as many as I could carry home [not to mention afford--but I paid hardly anything for all the vinyl I got that day]. I bought a lot of records clearly marked by "Linda as Smilie" and "Frances as Pinky" in ballpoint pen, proclaiming their love for Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones ("Hot Rocks 1964-1971" is masking-taped up and labeled "Linda Martinez {I got it in 1971}"), and Michael in all his manifestations from The Jacksons' eponymous 1976 release ("Keep on Dancing" and "Think Happy") through "Thriller." I also got some great salsa records in that warehouse: so much Celia, two by La Lupe, and "The Greatest of the Lebron Brothers," (with an amazing cartoon image of them posing as a basketball team--I couldn't find the image online anywhere) among others, as well as some random lovely stuff I still haven't learned enough about ("Los Grandes Exitos de Amalia Mendoza, 'La Tariacuri,'" and "Tonia La Negra interpreta a Augustin Lara," for instance). I imagine them as belonging to three generations: Linda, her mom (the salsa), and grandma (Amalia and Tonia La Negra). One of the best parts of things found is the stories, of course.

And we know I walked by that warehouse countless times after that, with more cash in my pocket, hoping for more records, and never saw those doors open ever again.

The last major acquisition was all the Ghanaian highlife records I bought in one fell swoop at the Salvation Army at Quincy and Nostrand: "A.B. Crentsil and the Super Sweet Talks, Int.," "Kunadu's Band," and a bunch more. I put back the pants I'd gone to the thrift store looking for, and just spent all my money on records, unheard--never regretted it.


Yeah, yeah. I know. Things I'll miss about Brooklyn.

Hopes and Dreams.

When I move back to Portland, Oregon this summer (attach joyous if somewhat oddly inspired song & dance routine a la ), I have a lot of hopes. Employment, for example.* But right now I mainly want to find an apartment with level floors, so that if I spill my coffee by knocking it off the coffee table in the living room, as I did this morning, it will not create a small stream past the kitchen and down the hall.




*Huge thanks to everyone who's been so helpful so far with tips and advice about finding a teaching position in PDX--anyone else with suggestions, I would love to hear them.

Observed.

A little boy on his scooter wipes out, shrieking--mom is sitting on the stoop, and she goes down the block to get him. Carrying him and the scooter back to the stoop, she says, deadpan, “Stop crying now, come here and sit with me, let’s wait for ACS to notice.”

On Lorimer below Broadway, in the grate of a first floor apartment's window, where the air conditioner will be in a couple months, sit two Styrofoam egg containers planted with seedlings.

Times Don't Change

This photo on the cover of the metro section of the Times made me cry today. The little boy--and the expression on the face of the man carrying him. It's hard to see, but the sign the child is holding says "I am Sean Bell."

Mix tapes

Listened to Claudia's mix tape from her high school boyfriend today while I did my taxes. Such a great idea to upload these to a website and have them accessible, in all their carefully curated glory, with their history noted as well... & like with a mix tape, it is a pain in the ass to fast-forward to the next song, so you have to suck it up and take it as the maker intended. This nostalgia for mix tapes absolutely dates me, and I don't mind a bit.

She like you?

At the bus stop, three teenagers are talking about "...that new girl..."

Girl: She like you?
Boy: She took my hoodie.
Girl: Your purple one?
Boy: She had it on yesterday.

Junot Diaz and Francisco Goldman

Actually went to hear writers talk of my own accord last week--and hope to go to another talk at the end of the month (April 29 at the Strand: Sherman Alexie and Peter Cameron). I must be getting over the MFA. Anyway Junot Diaz and Francisco Goldman had an interesting conversation about writing at the Grad Center at City College. The talk was supposed to be specifically about writing historical experience--and one of them (my notes suck) defined the historical novel as another genre of the fantasy novel, "pure fantasy." One of them--Diaz, I think--said that writing about history is like creating a Tolkien "subworld"--like "elves are this, dwarves are this."

They also talked about reading, and how reading is an individual practice; you do it by yourself unless you're reading to or being read to by someone else (one of the best things about being a teacher--both ends). But although most of us read alone, you learn how to read by, with, and from other people. I have lots of thoughts about that, especially lately--I grew up in a house full of books and full of readers, I was read to both before and after I learned to read myself, and the library was so essential to my life, probably more important than the TV--though I did watch so many hours of "Different Strokes" and "Facts of Life" as a kid. But I think I got told to put the book away and go to sleep or put the book away and look out the car window ("You're just gonna read a book, why are we even going on vacation, you could've stayed home and done that!") or put the book away and do my homework or the dishes or the laundry more than I got told to turn off the TV and do these things... though I also was told to get off the phone and ______, especially as I got older. But. Point being. I continue to be shocked by how many of my sixth grade students don't have library cards, don't read at home, don't have family members who take reading for granted. Reading is learned behavior, of course. I'm embarrassed by how long it took me to realize that the parents of my students who can't read also not surprisingly often can't read.

There was of course the question about how much Spanish is/should be/can be included in a novel written primarily in English, and neither writer gagged or groaned at it, which was thoughtful and polite and patient of them. Diaz said that he includes Spanish in his books like "adding pebbles to the back of English" and sometimes ends up taking stuff out if it seems to be breaking down meaning. He also noted that the Spanish itself doesn't tend to be a problem as much as all the different Spanishes, with slang, various vernaculars* and degrees of formal speech.

Diaz said, "Reading creates community" [wrote that down in my notebook but didn't note context, though it is part of the conversation about learning to read being a social activity], and and in answering a question about who he saw as the audience for Oscar Wao he said that a story is a collaboration between the person telling the story and a person who wants to hear it, and that real readers know how to work hard, and he trusts readers to do the work if the book is right for them. Also that "It's okay to lock some people out--just means there are words people have to figure out," and "a book isn't a piece of art if it's 100% intelligible to everyone." Which is so true--and the Spanish is intrinsic to the art in both their writing, though of course not the only thing.




*vernaculars? is that the plural? or is it a plural singular?

Subway Plans

Weekend train, mom and teenage daughter, and as we pull into Broadway-Nassau the mom says, "She said if we didn't see her to get off."

"There she is," the daughter says. "She gonna be mad."

A young woman gets on with her son, maybe five or six. Mom says to the woman who just got on, "It was her."

The woman laughs, she's shaking her head. "That's why I called you so early."

The little boy is extremely focused on his PSP. The three women talk. I get off at the next stop.

Lunch Poems

Finally bought Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems, with my usual excuse: it's for school! And we are starting a New York City unit, but mostly I bought Lunch Poems for me, because I've wanted it for a long time.

I didn't know about his "Joseph Cornell," which I found online here when I went looking for "Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul" so I wouldn't have to type it in. I haven't read anything about Cornell and O'Hara, but of course they would have had some contact...O'Hara seems to have some sympathy, some pity, but also some admiration for Cornell which makes me like O'Hara that much more. Cornell sounds like he was a difficult, awkward guy in social settings, and just generally odd. But O'Hara got the art, and O'Hara cared about art, so there you go.

Anyway I found that, but I didn't find the poem I was looking for. Here are the lines that are making me like it most lately:

but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night
wondering whether you are any good or not
and the only decision you can make is that you did it

...okay, except you really have to read the whole thing.


ADIEU TO NORMAN,
BON JOUR TO JEAN AND JEAN-PAUL

It is 12:10 in New York and I am wondering
if I will finish this in time to meet Norman for lunch
ah lunch! I think I am going crazy
what with my terrible hangover and the weekend coming up

at excitement-prone Kenneth Koch's
I wish I were staying in town and working on my poems
at Joan's studio for a new book by Grove Press
which they will probably not print
but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of the night
wondering whether you are any good or not
and the only decision you can make is that you did it

yesterday I looked up the rue Fremicourt on a map
and was happy to find it like a bird
flying over Paris et ses environs
which unfortunately did not include Seine-et-Oise which I don't know

as well as a number of other things
and Allen is back talking about god a lot
and Peter is back not talking very much
and Joe has a cold and is not coming to Kenneth's
although he is coming to lunch with Norman
I suspect he is making a distinction
well, who isn't

I wish I were reeling around Paris
instead of reeling around New York
I wish I weren't reeling at all
it is Spring the ice has melted the Ricard is being poured

we are all happy and young and toothless
it is the same as old age
the only thing to do is simply continue
is that simple
yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do
can you do it
yes, you can because it is the only thing to do
blue light over the Bois de Boulogne it continues
the Seine continues
the Louvre stays open it continues it hardly closes at all
the Bar Americain continues to be French
de Gaulle continues to be Algerian as does Camus
Shirley Goldfarb continues to be Shirley Goldfarb
and Jane Hazan continues to be Jane Freilicher (I think!)
and Irving Sandler continues to be the balayeur des artistes
and so do I (sometimes I think I'm "in love" with painting)
and surely the Piscine Deligny continues to have water in it
and the Flore continues to have tables and newspapers and people
under them
and surely we shall not continue to be unhappy
we shall be happy
but we shall continue to be ourselves everything continues to be
possible
Rene Char, Pierre Reverdy, Samuel Beckett it is possible isn't it
I love Reverdy for saying yes, though I don't believe it


1959

Translation

Also reading Anne Carson's translation of Sophocles' Electra, and as with Grief Lessons, I'm as fascinated by the commentary as by the text itself. The translator's forward has a great epigraph from Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "And how the red wild sparkles dimly burn/ Through the ashen grayness." Carson describes a translator as "someone trying to get in between a body and its shadow."

The chorus keeps trying to convince Electra to stop grieving her father and move on:

Not from Hades' black and universal lake can you lift him,
not by groaning, not by prayers.
Yet you run yourself out
in a grief with no cure,
no time-limit, no measure.
It is a knot no one can untie.
Why are you so in love with
things unbearable?


...but she wouldn't be Electra if she could get over it.

Captain Underpants!

I read the first Captain Underpants novel yesterday. I didn't want to do anything else until I finished it, and then all I wanted to do was read another Captain Underpants novel. I read so much young adult and children's fiction, but somehow missed out on Captain Underpants; I've paged through a couple, but never got into them. My sixth grade students last year loved them, but the principal refused to allow them into classrooms*--that should've been enough for me to read the series. So when I saw the first one in a sixth grade classroom I picked it up. Now it is on my highly recommended list--for everyone, indiscriminately, but I suppose especially for readers who appreciate humor, comics, superheroes, flip books, and/or precocious fourth-graders who figure out how to get one over on the evil principal AND save the world [maybe the true reason Ms. C. didn't allow them in the classrooms!].

Our heroes, George and Harold, like to hang out in their treehouse and make comic books. Then--and this part made me joyous, as all current and former zinesters will understand--they sneak into the school office and photocopy their Captain Underpants comics, then sell their forbidden comics to their peers on the playground for fifty cents each. George thought up Captain Underpants: "'Most superheroes look like they're flying around in their underwear. . . . Well, this guy actually is flying around in his underwear!'" He is "faster than a speeding waistband... more powerful than boxer shorts... and able to leap tall buildings without getting a wedgie." He fights for "truth, justice, and all that is pre-shrunk and cottony."

The evil principal, Mr. Krupp, hates children, and especially hates George and Harold: "He hated their pranks and their wisecracks. He hated their silly attitudes and their constant giggling. And he especially hated those awful Captain Underpants comic books." Plots ensue, on both sides, and it is more marvelous than can be imagined--marvelous enough, clearly, to spark a series. I don't want to spoil anything--let's just say that the real action starts when Harold and George send away for a 3-D hypno ring, and it gets better from there. At one point George says, "'You know, up until now this story was almost believable!'"



* My previous school stocked the classroom libraries with a lot of great literature that didn't get read but supposedly impressed people from the region with how accelerated our scholar's program was. I sneaked good books to the kids, and developed a fabulous censorship unit. Anyway, we all know that turning something into an illicit activity might be the best way to encourage it, especially among early adolescents--I wish that had been my principal's thinking, though I probably still would have been annoyed with it.