civilization and its discontents...

I’m listening to Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons singing Love Hurts (ignore the video - it should be Gram and Emmy, IMHO - just listen to the music) - I’m pretty sure this is the best of the myriad renditions of that song. It’s not a song to listen to if you’ve just broken up with someone (I write from experience), but that’s not my situation right now, so I’m enjoying it. I’ve been thinking about music in part because I went onto Amazon.com today to look for a CD by Canadian Romi Mayes - I wanted her new (last fall) CD, “Sweet Something Steady”. I missed her when she blew through Dallas at that time, but I heard her sing the title song on NPR, and I was blown away by her style, which has been described as “country bourbon bluegrass soul” - (gotta love that!) as well as by her sexy, sassy lyrics:

Don’t want no fancy diamonds
I don’t want your mother’s pearls
Don’t want you to tell me
That I’m your only girl
Just want a man
to come on back
pick me up
and take me for a ride
Why can’t you be my sweet something steady on the side?

Don’t need your folks for dinner
I don’t need to rest
I don’t need to walk the aisle
I don’t need a fancy dress
I don’t need to hear you love me
While you look deeply in my eyes
Why can’t you be my sweet something steady on the side?

Amazon didn’t have it, which doesn’t surprise me; shopping at Amazon for music is like going to Blockbuster for movies - they seldom have what I’m looking for at either place...anyway, lucky for me, Romi Mayes has her own website, so the CD is on its way. I did score three Allard and Marshall Stupids books at Amazon, though, and I’m looking forward to reading them to Xander, who’s requested more of The Stupids...Buster mowing the rug and other pleasures await us!

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I’ve had a shower and washed my hair, and I’m barefoot and wearing a favorite pair of clean, soft, ancient sweats. I’ve removed my contacts and put on reading glasses and I’ve poured myself a glass of red wine and I’ve moved on to Billie Holiday (Them There Eyes is playing as I write). At the risk of sounding incredibly boring (what do I care?) this is my favorite type of Saturday night - home alone and enjoying myself immensely. My friend S has her own variation of this; she bought a big screen tv that she refers to as her Boyfriend, and when people ask what she’s doing, she says, truthfully, she’s spending the night with her Boyfriend, watching what she wants, no fights over the remote... ;p

I’ve moved on to Django Reinhardt, Swing from Paris (I Got Rhythm). In addition to The Stupids, I ordered a book for myself from Amazon this afternoon: Marshal South and The Ghost Mountain Chronicles: An Experiment in Primitive Living. Marshal South was an interesting guy; a published poet, author and artist who, in 1930, moved with his second wife, Tanya (a Rosicrucian), to the top of a waterless, remote mountain in the middle of the Anza-Borrego Desert in California: Ghost Mountain. By 1932 they’d built an adobe house to live in and eventually three children were born to them there. They lived there until 1947, when the marriage ended acrimoniously. I’m fascinated by desert and mountain loners. There are actually quite a lot of them, and I always enjoy reading about them. I have to admit that there is a part of their leaving civilization that intrigues and appeals to me. Driving around Big Bend a couple of years ago, I spotted the ruins of a house on the top of a mesa. I decided to hike up to it. It was further than it looked; a good 30 minutes from the road, and I was hot and sweating by the time I got to the top, but oh - the view! I stood inside the remains of the house and wondered who had lived here, and when...and how did they haul water up, because there was no possibility of a well on top of the mesa, and there was no water nearby. (Marshal and Tanya South and their children solved this problem by being nudists in warm weather - their lifestyle was documented regularly in Desert Magazine.) The view was spectacular, there was no doubt about it - but I like my creature comforts: my big bed with down pillows and linen sheets; my glass of wine, some good cheese, a bunch of grapes; my walls of books, good coffee, a blooming orchid if I want it, and MUSIC - listening to Django Reinhardt 55 years after his death...and typing out my thoughts about all of this in my gameroom, on my keyboard, at 4:00 AM...