Nonessential Reading

Away at Sea

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:49:00 -0400

While I’m at Mother Jones, I’ll be doing most of my blogging there. Old music here; and science here.

Songs for Your Bluesday: Preservation Hall

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:54:00 -0400

FREE SONGS FROM PRESERVATION HALL or WHEN TO CAPITALIZE “JAZZ”

On Preservation Hall’s website, they capitalize “Jazz” only when referring to “New Orleans Jazz.”

***

Since the 1960s, Preservation Hall in New Orleans has been dedicated to preserving the lazy, easy, sound of old New Orleans Jazz that, according to the venue’s website, has “lost much of its popularity to modern jazz and rock and roll.” This compilation of songs, streaming for free online, was recorded at the hall by a collection of singers, from Louis Armstrong to Tom Waits to Yim Yames, all backed by the Preservation Hall band.

***

The hall is open every night from 8PM to 11PM. This schedule was interrupted only after Katrina, when the hall was closed between August 2005 and April 2006.

***

Hearing Yim Yames play “Louisiana Fairytale” one gets the sense he has come to pay homage to a place he would like to think he is from. Tom Waits is the same story. I make this claim (“like to think [they are] from…”) so freely because I suspect that, against this music, most of us like to think of the place as our own.

***

After Katrina, Richard Ford wrote this in The Observer:

It is - New Orleans is - a city foremost for special projections, for the things you can’t do, see, think, consume, feel, forget up in Jackson or Little Rock or home in Topeka. ‘We’re at the jumping-off place,’ Miss Welty wrote. This was about Plaquemines, just across the river. It is - New Orleans - the place where the firm ground ceases and the unsound footing begins. A certain kind of person likes such a place. A certain kind of person wants to go there and never leave.

***

“And while we’re lost in dreams / the world around us seems / like a Lou’siana Fairytale.”

Songs for Your Bluesday: "St. James Infirmary Blues"

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:30:00 -0500

121 RECORDINGS OF THE “ST. JAMES INFIRMARY BLUES” or WHAT A 500-YEAR-OLD HOSPITAL FOR LEPERS AND LOUIS ARMSTRONG HAVE IN COMMON

I recently came across an archive of “St. James Infirmary Blues” recordings that should make for some good Bluesday listening. It’s got everything from Cab Calloway to Josh White to Dave Van Ronk to The White Stripes. But before you dig into the over 100 recordings in the archive, it might be worth knowing a bit about the long history of this American standard.

It gets its name—and much of its context—from the St. James Hospital, a foundation in London for lepers living “chastely and honestly in divine service.” In 1532 the St. James Hospital was closed when Henry VIII purchased the grounds to build his St. James Palace. Jonathan Swift described the palace in a letter to his friend Esther Johnson: ”Houses of amusements abounded…bibbing and drinking under the trees: two or three quarrels every week. It was grown scandalous and insufferable.” In fact, another “contemporary’s” description of St. James Palace, found in the liner notes of the 1960 Folkways record The Unfortunate Rake seems to sum up the mood of the “St. James Infirmary Blues” nicely:

[T]he palace “looked more like a prison than a royal mansion.” [It] evoked in one observer a mood which paralleled the spirit of the times, one of “terrible drama…some deeply tragic…some gay…with a transient light like that which at times gilds for a moment the fierce black waves breaking over a stranded ship.”

The song’s music evolved from the 18th century English folk song, “The Unfortunate Rake,” which tells the story of a sailor who dies of a venereal disease after a lifetime enjoying the company of prostitutes. “The Unfortunate Rake” also seems to be the grandfather of the cowboy classic “Streets of Laredo.” (There is a lot more to the influence of “The Unfortunate Rake” on folk music in general. If you are interested, it can be found here.)

Despite this decidedly European history, though, in the 20th century the “St. James Infirmary Blues” evolved into a distinctly American song. A popular version of the lyrics speaks for itself in this respect: “Oh, when I die, bury me / In my high top Stetson hat; /Put a twenty-dollar gold piece on my watch chain / So the boys’ll know I died standin’ pat.”

***

In case you don’t have the time to listen to all 121 versions of the song contained in the archive, I’ve selected a few of my favorites:

“St. James Infirmary” by Blind John Davis
“St. James Infirmary” by Louis Armstrong
“Gambler’s Blues” by Dave Van Ronk
“St. James Infirmary” by the Harlem Hot Chocolates

Townes Van Zandt's Jokes

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:01:00 -0500

BETWEEN PLAYING EVEN HIS SADDEST SONGS TOWNES VAN ZANDT ENJOYED TELLING A GOOD JOKE. THE QUESTION IS, WHY DID IT WORK SO WELL?

“There were these two drunks having this argument outside a bar,” Townes Van Zandt said towards the end of his 1973 set at the Old Quarter in Houston. “They’re arguing as to whether that object up in the sky was the sun or the moon. This other drunk stumbles out of the bar and one of ‘em walks over and says, ‘Buddy will you help us out? We are having an argument and we can’t decide who is right… Is that the sun or the moon?’ [The man replies:] ‘aw I don’t know man, I ain’t from this neighborhood.’”

When I listened to Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas¹ for the first time last week, it wasn’t the music that surprised me. Townes’ set that night was like most of his sets: woeful songs about wandering, loneliness, drugs, booze, and heartbreak. What struck me was the jokes and anecdotes, like the two drunks arguing about the moon, that he told so casually throughout the somber performance. Immediately following the moon joke is “Tower Song”²: “The end is coming soon it’s plain / A warm bed just ain’t worth the pain / And I will go and you’ll remain / With the bitterness we tasted.” I’d call his jokes out of place among sad lyrics like these if it weren’t for the fact that, for some reason, they work quite well.

That I didn’t expect the man of seemingly bottomless despair to also be a teller of jokes is probably just indicative of how little I knew about him. It appears he was almost the stuff of legend in his ability to challenge the context of a situation. Townes came from a long line of powerful Texans who had made their money in oil. (Almost a century before he was born, Van Zandt County was named after his influential family.) Yet he chose to abandon everything and become an outlaw musician, committed to a lifestyle of poverty and loneliness—a decision that seemed puzzling to me considering how sensitive Townes appears to have been. A childhood friend of his told the following story, which can be found in A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt³ by Robert Early Hardy:

When Townes was five or six years old, his parents took him to a restaurant where there were live lobsters in a tank and he was told he could pick out his own lobster. “So he thought that he was picking out a pet to take home, and he went, ‘Oh, boy.’ He was thinking, ‘Oh, boy, I’ve got a new pet. I can’t wait. I can’t wait.’ And when they sat the plate in front of him…he was terribly upset. They were at a big round table with a lot of other people, and his father was sensitive enough to realize what had happened. He leaned over and said, ‘I know, Townes, I know. Just try to hang in there.’ And Townes would never forget it.

“Townes felt things more than the rest of us,” his sister once said. And his history is filled with stories illustrating his deep devotion to those around him. Take the story his first guitar: As a kid, Elvis had fascinated Townes. (“I just thought Elvis had all the money in the world, all the Cadillacs and all the girls, and all he did was play the guitar and sing. That made a big impression on me,” he later recalled.) After seeing Elvis on television, he begged his father for a guitar and his father agreed on the condition that the first song Townes learned would be the “Faulein,” a popular country song at the time. He proudly played the song for his father for the rest of his life.³

Yet this was also the man who reflected that there came a point in his life where he consciously decided to leave his family behind in order to become a musician. “To the people he loved,” his son J.T. told an interviewer for Lone Star Music⁴, “he could scorn you pretty hard.” This seems, then, to be the peculiar nature of Townes Van Zandt: He had more than most and he gave up more than most; he loved more than most and he hurt more than most; he opened a sad song with a bad joke. “It wasn’t a choice of his,” J.T. said of his father’s personality in the Lone Star interview, “he just soaked in that sadness sometimes, intense sadness. But he could come reeling out of it and be really witty and humorous too.”

Townes’ use of humor is as telling as anything about the ways he readily challenged the situations in which he found himself: Musician and friend Steve Earle once called him “the best songwriter in the whole world,” adding, “I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” Townes, who was notoriously humble about his own songs, responded: “I’ve met Bob Dylan and his bodyguards, and I don’t think Steve could get anywhere near his coffee table.” Townes redirected Earle’s praise away from the matter at hand (in this case, whether or not he is a better songwriter than Bob Dylan) and added a third dimension to the discussion. It strikes me how successful he was at this. After reading his response to Earle one no longer cares who the better songwriter is and instead an entirely more enjoyable sentiment emerges.

Getting back to his performance at the Old Quarter, it seems that his jokes worked in the same way. They are not a response or reaction to the woeful songs that surround them, nor do they mean to suggest that the overall performance is any less serious. They simply elevate the album as a whole beyond sad songs. They serve to provide that more interesting, more difficult to pin down, third dimension to the singer of these songs—and, as a consequence, the songs themselves.

What drove Townes to play an almost trickster-esque role in whatever context he found himself is certainly beyond me to uncover. But the answer might to some extent be contained in comments his son made in the Lone Star interview: “[H]e always felt that he saw white angels or goblins. It was one of the two, and if they were goblins… shit was about to hit the fan.” Townes’ claims of visions are perhaps given more credence by a psychological evaluation he underwent in the 1960s. “While the overall pattern of this youth’s protocol is not floridly psychotic, he is moving in that direction,” the report read, “and his test protocols are reflective of a definitive schizophrenic potential and possible current underlying psychotic ideation.” ³

The last verse of “Tower Song” finishes: “A mother’s breast, a new born child / a poet’s tears, a drunken smile / I can’t help thinking all the while / Their meaning won’t be wasted.” No doubt the poet’s tears he was singing about were his, as was the drunken smile. The thing about Townes, as evinced in Live at the Old Quarter, was that he had them both at the same time. It starts to make sense, then, why it worked when he told jokes between his sad songs. He probably would have told them during the songs if he could have. The better question might be: To whom was he telling them, the goblins or the angels?

Notes:

1. Live at the Old Quarter, Houston, Texas
2. “Tower Song”
3. A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt
4. Lone Star Music Interview with J.T. Van Zandt

Previous:

Psychology, Religion, and The Good Thomas Merton
A RECENT STUDY ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH ILLUSTRATES THE DIFFICULTIES FACING SCIENTISTS WHO TRY TO BATTLE BELIEF ON ITS OWN TERMS.

Related articles I’ve written for Seed magazine:

Yellow, Black, and Blue
A LOOK AT OUR AGRICULTURAL PAST MAY EXPLAIN WHY HONEY BEES AROUND THE WORLD BEGAN DISAPPEARING THREE YEARS AGO.
The Wagnerian Method
PHYSICISTS INVESTIGATE THE GRAND ARTISTIC VISION OF ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF THE LAST TWO CENTURIES.
Winds of Change
THE STORIES WE TELL PROVIDE US WITH A RECORD OF OUR CONTINUING STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND THE PECULIAR EFFECTS WEATHER HAS ON OUR LIVES.

Psychology, Religion, and The Good Thomas Merton

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:50:00 -0500

A RECENT STUDY ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH ILLUSTRATES THE DIFFICULTIES FACING SCIENTISTS WHO TRY TO BATTLE BELIEF ON ITS OWN TERMS.

In a study¹ published in the January 8 online edition of Psychological Science, researchers at the University of Waterloo looked at what they called the “psychological underpinnings of religious faith.” They found that students who were made to think about ideas related to disorder and randomness in the world were more inclined than their peers to believe in God or a similar nonhuman entity. According to the researchers, the findings suggest that “belief in supernatural sources of control, such as God and Karma, may function, in part, to defend against distress associated with randomness.” In short, when our sense of order in the universe is threatened, we start thinking about the supernatural.

Undoubtedly I’ve already lost more than a few readers with the phrase “psychological underpinnings of religious faith” and the suggestion of a “nonhuman entity” similar to God. But for those of you still with me, I think a closer examination of the study actually articulates a fundamental limit to many of the arguments that attempt to convince Christians of a psychological basis for religious faith.

During the Waterloo study the 37 participants were unknowingly divided into two major groups: Those who were made to think about randomness in the world and those who were not. In order to prime thoughts of randomness in the first group, the researchers gave each member a set of 16 scrambled sentences to correct, eight of which contained words with connotations of disorder like “chaotic” and “unpredictability.” In this way the first group was made to confront concepts closely tied with randomness and and confusion. The second group of students was given a similar set of jumbled sentences to correct that did not contain any chaotic words. To evaluate the effect this “randomness-priming” had on the religious beliefs of first group of students, both groups were asked to rate the likelihood on a seven-point scale that each of the following statements was true:

It is feasible that God, or some type of nonhuman entity, is in control, at least in part, of the events within our universe.
The events that occur in this world unfold God’s, or some other nonhuman entity’s, plan.
There exists a spiritual order in the universe, such as Karma.

The researchers compared the results and, as I mentioned earlier, the students who had been randomness-primed found each of these statements more likely than those who had not been primed. But that isn’t quite the whole story.

All of the students in the study had been led initially to believe they were participating in an experiment testing the “effects of an herbal supplement on color perception.” (This, of course, was to ensure an unbiased sample of the student population for the actual study about faith.) Upon arrival at the test site, each participant had been given a pill that they were told was the herbal supplement being evaluated. In reality the pill did nothing, but some of the students had been told it may have side effects of “arousal or mild anxiety.” So in fact each of the two major groups was divided into two subgroups: students who thought the pill they took had side effects and students who did not.

It was only the subgroup of the randomness-primed students who had not been warned of any side effects that actually proved to be statistically more likely to believe in God. What all this means is that those randomness-primed students who could attribute their uneasiness to anxiety caused by the pill they had taken did so; it was those with no explanation that looked to the supernatural for answers.

It is here, at the idea that only when we can’t immediately make sense of the chaotic do we turn to religion, that I think the study might be helpful in illustrating the problem facing scientists trying to convince Christians that faith has a psychological basis. When I originally read this study I began looking through some essays on Christianity, curious to see how the issue of disorder and unpredictability was dealt with. I was surprised to find that in The Ascent to Truth,² the Catholic priest Thomas Merton more or less seemed to affirm the researchers’ findings:

[W]e stand in very grave danger of a wave of false mysticism. When the world is in greatest confusion, visionaries become oracles. Panic, like every other passion, blinds the intelligence of man, and he is glad of an excuse to take refuge from everything that bewilders him by giving it a “supernatural” interpretation.

It struck me as strange that the ideas of a Catholic priest would jibe so well with findings about the psychological underpinnings of religious faith: both seem to agree that unexplainable panic drives people to God. How then could Merton be arguing for the existence of God while the researchers from Waterloo seem to be explaining it away scientifically?

I’m certainly no theologian, so take this for what it’s worth³, but the answer seems to rest in Merton’s concept of false mysticism. For him, those who use religion to alleviate their panic over chaos in the world are deceiving themselves. He would happily agree that religion founded in a psychological fear of chaos is no religion at all. The Waterloo researchers have simply provided experimental evidence that this deception occurs. The problem, then, with psychological arguments against mysticism is that all they can do is explain away a belief in the supernatural that (at least some) Christian scholars already concede is false.*

For Merton, however, there is also true mysticism⁴—an honest-to-goodness faith arrived at through wisdom and contemplation. And this true mysticism is what scientists would really need to explain psychologically in order to confront religious faith on its own terms. Unfortunately, by Merton’s definition of genuine mysticism as that which is not false, it is untouchable to studies like those of the Waterloo researchers. Simply put, any time scientists find a psychological justification for a particular instance of mysticism, all they have done, in the “Mertonian” Catholic’s eyes, is more explicitly define false mysticism—and by extension, that honest-to-goodness true mysticism. It’s an unlikely collaboration not without a hint of irony.

Notes:

1. Randomness, Attributions of Arousal, and Belief in God
2. The Ascent to Truth
3. Not much
4. “True mysticism” is my word for the mysticism that Merton would not consider false.
* After posting this piece I received an email from a psychology student suggesting that I had misinterpreted the results of the Waterloo study. The student explained that “the psychology of religion is not meant to confront religion and wage battle against it, but merely to understand it.” I in no way meant to imply that the Waterloo researchers claimed to have shown religion to be false. They did not make such a claim. At the same time, it is hardly controversial that some scientists do “wage battle” against religion (and often, in fact, I agree with them). And even when scientists don’t, their results are often used to that end. This piece is about understanding why using the Waterloo study and psychology studies like it in that way wouldn’t seem to hold much water with Christian scholars. Considering the myriad ways in which general science is translated to a popular audience, I find it hard to imagine that this is a point that doesn’t need to be made. As I mentioned in the piece, religion isn’t my strong suit, and as such I had thought criticisms would be of the theological nature. But in any case, please feel free to send them my way if you have them.

Next:

Townes Van Zandt’s Jokes
BETWEEN PLAYING EVEN HIS SADDEST SONGS TOWNES VAN ZANDT ENJOYED TELLING A GOOD JOKE. THE QUESTION IS, WHY DID IT WORK SO WELL?

Related articles I’ve written for Seed magazine:

Into the Uncanny Valley
NEW FINDINGS SHED LIGHT ON A CENTURY’S WORTH OF BIZARRE EXPLANATIONS FOR THE EERIE FEELING WE GET AROUND LIFELIKE ROBOTS.
Yellow, Black, and Blue
A LOOK AT OUR AGRICULTURAL PAST MAY EXPLAIN WHY HONEY BEES AROUND THE WORLD BEGAN DISAPPEARING THREE YEARS AGO.
The Wagnerian Method
PHYSICISTS INVESTIGATE THE GRAND ARTISTIC VISION OF ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL ARTISTS OF THE LAST TWO CENTURIES.
Winds of Change
THE STORIES WE TELL PROVIDE US WITH A RECORD OF OUR CONTINUING STRUGGLE TO UNDERSTAND THE PECULIAR EFFECTS WEATHER HAS ON OUR LIVES.