The Deepest Sea Remains A Mystery

The opportunity presented itself a couple of weeks ago for me to dive back into the world and life of Nick Drake so I put down the book I had already started and picked up another Drake biography. I had recently read the biography of Drake by Patrick Humphries and when I came across a copy of Darker Than The Deepest Sea (published 2006) by Trevor Dann I couldn't resist it.

Nick Drake's world is a confusing and depressing place filled with beautiful music but reading two biographies on his life in a short span may have been too much for me. Still, reading Darker Than The Deepest Sea was a pleasure and it went quickly as I finished it in just two days. There's only so much information to mine about someone that lived so short a life and in a time when we didn't keep digital records of everything we do so if you've read Humphries' biography on Drake you aren't going to learn much new in this book.

Between the two biographies of Drake I found the one of Humphries to be more comprehensive and interested in dissecting every song by Drake versus the book by Dann which is more casual in its writing style but perhaps more updated having been published later with more accurate details about mostly minor things.

I did get a better sense of who young Nick was as Dann spends more time writing about Drake's public school days. For instance, I learned that Nick was a disinterested student that was barely accepted into college at Cambridge having to take his exams twice and waiting another school term. Without some pleading on his behalf from staff at his public school Drake would have never gotten a spot at Cambridge.

This book advances the idea that Drake was schizophrenic and that his drug abuse exacerbated his mental problems. Plenty of reference is made to the copious amounts of marijuana that he smoked for several years and again the idea that he was a user of heroin. The idea of him using heroin though has never been confirmed by any witness in anything that I have read about Drake. It is certainly possible that he used heroin given who he was hanging out with and that heroin seemed to fit his personality. This speculation is much different than in the Humphries biography which has Nick's friends strongly denying that he was ever known to have taken heroin.

But then Nick was a mystery to even his friends so whether he was a heroin user or not or whether he was gay or not (yes, this book too speculates on his sexuality) they simply cannot do anything more than speculate themselves like the rest us decades after his death.

People that were friends with Nick have felt like they never knew him well with his enigmatic comings and goings. So certainly none of the rest of us are ever going to figure the man out decades after his death no matter how hard we try. The dark and deep sea that was the life of Nick Drake is still a mystery. I say enjoy the music he left behind for that is what matters most and that was what made me discover him in the beginning.

This book is a good companion piece to the more in-depth biography written by Humphries. If you are a Drake fan of course the book is worth your time and if you for some reason have to choose between reading the Humphries biography or this one I would go with the one by Humphries.

Facebook Does Evil

So many smart and timely articles have been published recently about the terrible and dangerous ways Facebook is acting that I thought I would share three that I happened across today without even seeking them out.

The first article is from BuzzFeed News about how Facebook partners with the anti-democratic government in Cambodia in silencing dissent.
Excerpt:

When Facebook first came to Cambodia, many hoped it would help to usher in a new period of free speech, amplifying voices that countered the narrative of the government-friendly traditional press. Instead, the opposite has happened. Prime Minister Hun Sen is now using the platform to promote his message while jailing his critics, and his staff is doing its best to exploit Facebook’s own rules to shut down criticism — all through a direct relationship with the company’s staff.
Facebook has also dramatically reduced the reach of independent media in Cambodia after it decided last year to silo off their content as part of a controversial experiment. The company said this month it would make similar changes to News Feeds for users worldwide.

The second article is from Gizmodo and is about how Facebook spies on you and can track you by the dust on your cell phone camera lens. Really? Yes, really.
Excerpt:

It might assume two people knew each other if the images they uploaded looked like they were titled in the same series of photos—IMG_4605739.jpg and IMG_4605742, for example—or if lens scratches or dust were detectable in the same spots on the photos, revealing the photos were taken by the same camera.

The third article is from Vanity Fair and it touches on the potential downward spiral that is ahead for Facebook. I certainly hope Facebook faces a downward spiral and I do believe it is in trouble with users in Europe and in the United States but it may be overly optimistic in predicting a dramatic drop off in users like Myspace experienced. Facebook has long sought to increase its user base in Asia and that is where their growth, if they see any, will come from. I hope people in Asia are wise enough to avoid the Facebook trap.
Excerpt:

When Zuckerberg looks into his big-data crystal ball, he can see a troublesome trend occurring. A few years ago, for example, there wasn’t a single person I knew who didn’t have Facebook on their smartphone. These days, it’s the opposite. This is largely anecdotal, but almost everyone I know has deleted at least one social app from their devices. And Facebook is almost always the first to go. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and other sneaky privacy-piercing applications are being removed by people who simply feel icky about what these platforms are doing to them, and to society.

I have none of those applications on my phone and when I did I never allowed them to access my contacts because it was none of their damn business. I haven't had the Facebook app on my phone in years.

I'm still torn on having a Facebook account at all at this point, I don't ever use it but still it exists and that bothers me. I have deleted it before and then joined again six months later with a new account. This time if I delete my account it will be permanent with no going back.

Updated to add 1/15/2018:
Today in Davos at the World Economic Forum, George Soros made a speech on the dangers of Facebook on the human mind and the threats to society. Here's an excerpt from an article about his speech in the Guardian:

“This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.”

In addition to skewing democracy, social media companies “deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes” and “deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide”. The latter, he said, “can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents”.

“The power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies. It takes a real effort to assert and defend what John Stuart Mill called ‘the freedom of mind’. There is a possibility that once lost, people who grow up in the digital age will have difficulty in regaining it. This may have far-reaching political consequences.”

Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines.

Graffiti Woods

The South Peachtree Creek Trail and some of the large houses that overlook it. Photo by me, January 2018.

The streets still showed the battle signs of winter snow being that they were covered in salt and sand but on Sunday it was so warm you would have thought it was spring. The sudden warmth and deep blue sky lured the world or at least Atlanta out of its winter hibernation. I had planned to go for a long walk and apparently all of the city had the same idea which was to put on shorts and get outside, it was that warm. On Sunday the high reached 68 F (20C) and we had not seen weather this warm in a very long time.

I had entertained the idea of heading north to the mountains but I knew the trails would be busy with people out with the same idea during this warm break. There was also the federal government shutdown so I knew some hiking areas would be closed because they are federally managed and during government shutdowns those areas get closed.

I decided to go walk in my regular walking spot at the South Peachtree Creek Trail which is nearest where I live and it is a pleasant place. Every household in my part of the city had the same idea and I have never seen this trail so busy as I did on Sunday. I know how crowded the Atlanta Beltline becomes on weekends so I rarely walk there and on Sunday the South Peachtree Creek Trail was just as crowded.

One of the less crowded moments. Photo by me, January 2018.

I managed to get in two miles on Sunday which was not as long as I had hoped but the time was slipping by quickly and I had other things to do.

I detoured off the trail to the graffiti covered ruins of the old Decatur Waterworks which I had not been down to see since 2011. I took some photos of the place as I wandered around looking at the pretty colors. I noticed some of the old walls had come down since I had last been down there seven years ago.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

Photo by me, January 2018.

I am glad to see that they are still allowing people paint on the ruins. Having an area like this with the old ruins and colorful walls is a cool place to explore and not feel like the entire world has been sanitized.

An Unknown Compelling Force

In 1956 a group of nine Russian hikers, mostly college students at Ural Poly-technical Institute, died under mysterious circumstances while camping in winter on the side of Holatchahl Mountain. Their deaths have been commonly referred to the Dyatlov Pass Incident which is derived from the name of the leader of the group Igor Dyatlov.

I had heard about the Dyatlov incident before and even had watched a documentary on it and a movie that was partly based on the story. Most of what you read on the internet about Dyatlov is conspiracy theory and borders on the absurd. When there is an absence of information about an interesting story that void will often be filled with wild conspiracy theories and the Dyatlov story is no different. People have floated theories that aliens killed the hikers, the government was behind it, local tribesman or escaped convicts murdered them or that one of the group members went into a jealous lover's rage and did it. I had always felt that science one way or another would come to solve this mystery and that seems to be so.

The book I chose to read about this was Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story Of The Dyatlov Pass Incident (2013) by author Donnie Eichar. Ok, don't let that awful title that reads like a crappy made for television movie on Lifetime dissuade you from this book because it is fairly thorough and interesting. Eichar isn't the greatest writer and the book shakily begins talking too much about himself but it improves as it goes along. So if you can get beyond the narcissism there is a good story here.

The book does a well at explaining how and by whom the investigation was conducted and it also does well at putting the time in which this incident took place into context with the government of Nikita Khrushchev.

This book provides a look into the backgrounds of the hikers and explains at how well prepared they were to take on the challenge of winter hiking in the Ural mountains.  I learned from reading this that I had a few things in common with the leader of the group Igor Dyatlov, we both loved photography, hiking and radio communications. It was nice to learn about the hiking club at the university and the levels of hiking classification it offered to members. I do wish it had gone more into the Mansi people but that might have been too much of a diversion for the book so there is something for me to learn about on my own I suppose.

If you want to cut through the internet conspiracy theories and read a well researched account of what happened at Dyatlov Pass then this is a good book for just that. You will find more information compiled in this book and photos of the group than you can from reading websites about the Dyatlov Pass Incident.

The book does come to its own conclusion as to what happened to the hikers that night on the mountain. The theory he postulates is one that involves meteorology. With help from NOAA scientists in the United States and a friend of the author in Russia they suggest that infrasound and a Karman vortex street as a result of the landscape and weather that night is what compelled the hikers to abandon the safety of their tent and die as a result. The treeless dome shaped mountain with wind blowing over and downsloping over it created twin vortices which resulted in infrasound. That infrasound had negative consequences on the hikers in their tent with a low humming sound that caused confusion, panic, possible physical pain and forced them out of the tent into the cold night. Some died from hypothermia and some died from a combination of falling into a ravine injuring themselves with broken bones and hypothermia.

The theory presented is a believable scenario and one I find as a most credible theory that is based on science to explain the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass Incident. I would trust proven scientific theory or a conspiracy theory every time.

Either Weird Or Lonely

T he last weekend of 2017 is here and it's cold, it has been cold for days now and it slaps me in the face every morning stepping out to start the day. I have found time for what will probably be my last blog post of this year and so I'm sitting here with my coffee ready to write.

Last weekend, which was Christmas weekend, I finished reading a biography of one of my favorite singer/songwriters and that is Nick Drake. I fell in love with Nick's music about fifteen years ago and I can't even remember how I first heard his voice now which is a shame.

Nick again was one of those troubled souls that suffered from depression or a more significant mental disorder perhaps schizophrenia and ultimately he overdosed in a likely suicide in 1974 at the age of twenty-six. He died having only completely finishing three albums of music and never experiencing fortune or fame. His music wouldn't be well-received and become even remotely popular until well after his death. I still wouldn't consider him that famous or well known except for those with cultivated musical tastes that stray from the mainstream of music. However once you discover Nick's soothing voice, fantastic acoustic guitar playing and poignant lyrics that draw from nature and conjure up images of the English countryside you realize you have found someone special.

Going into reading Nick Drake : The Biography by Patrick Humphries (1998) I knew to expect a sad tale and Nick's life was just that especially in the last four years of his life in London and then back at his parent's house in Tanworth-in-Arden. I did learn from reading the book that Nick was a mostly well adjusted child at boarding school and he even played sports and this is when he became more interested in performing music. He would go to college in Cambridge and this is where he became more interested in drugs, especially marijuana, and somewhere at this point in his life he began to slowly pull away into his own world. He would leave Cambridge with a year left to complete his degree to go record his first album and live in London.

In London with a recording contract with Island Records he put out three albums and had recorded four tracks for another album before he died. Nick developed a fear of performing live on stage and touring to support his music so none of his albums were promoted and sold well in his lifetime. Nick was a paradox in that he wanted recognition but he didn't want or couldn't do the touring that would have helped him achieve his dreams.

Nick's mental problems grew in London and he became so detached over time that he wouldn't wash, would sit and stare at walls, would hardly speak and was living in a world that was wholly contained within his head. Yet, despite all that he was a perfectionist on the guitar had a smooth velvety voice and could write fascinating songs.

The book went through Nick's life with a fine tooth comb despite not having the assistance of his existing family members to flush out some of the details. There are many repetitious passages in the book which were obvious moments of filler but I did appreciate all the insight provided into the recording sessions and interviews with most of the people that worked with or were friends with Nick. Overall, I thought the book was a great read.

If you've never heard the magic of Nick Drake you should give him a try.

One last note about Nick and his personal life which included no known lovers male or female, I suspect that he was deep in the closet. I think Nick was gay in deep denial and that was part of his mental problems. If you look at photos of him he was very fashionable, aloof, incredibly handsome and he was known to be incredibly sensitive. Somewhere out there whether in his trips to France or Morocco some guy has a Nick Drake sexual story to share. Even one of the few women that was close to Nick in London and admitted to fumbling around with him thinks that he was gay. I'm not alone in thinking Nick was gay as many have speculated such and it is even discussed a few times in his biography. Whether he was gay or not I still love his music and wish he had had a much longer and better life than he did.

Reading In The Shadows

Normally I would hesitate to read a biography about a rock musician or band because you often find that the people that make music you enjoy are flawed people at best or terrible assholes. Then I decided to read Touching From A Distance (1995) by Deborah Curtis about Ian Curtis the late lead singer of Joy Division and my expectations were confirmed that he was a deeply unstable person and he was a terrible asshole too. Just once I would like to read about a musician that was a normal person.

One might argue or suggest that being famous transforms a person into a bad person and damages them in ways that make them unlikable but in the case of Ian Curtis he was an anti-social prick even as a teenager.

The book is written by his wife (who was in the process of divorcing him at the time of his suicide) and she writes that Ian always seemed to have had a death wish to die young. He succeeded in dying young at the age of twenty-three and thus like other rock stars that died young he's been hoisted onto a pedestal like Cobain or Hendrix or Joplin for the simple fact they died young and made some good music. Over time their legend overshadows what music they made in their short lives.

I try not to make heroes out of musicians or worship them because no matter how great their music might be, the people behind its creation will always let you down. It is better to live in the unaware bliss of just enjoying the music for the sake of loving music than learning too deeply about who made it. Disappointment will taint the music you enjoy if you dig too deeply into its creator.

The book relates one story after another of Ian behaving poorly and though his wife repeatedly talks of how overwhelmingly generous he was she only tells one story to support that claim of when he gave a homeless man some food. Otherwise most of the stories are about how selfish a person he was that only seemed to be concerned about himself. He seemed to love and miss the dog named Candy more than he did his own daughter or his wife. He was a man that relied heavily on his wife to do everything in the household and he barely even contributed any money to it though he was becoming a famous rock star. He was off running around with his mistress and holing up in various places with her instead of ever spending time with his family. He was pretty damn shameless in how he acted and when your husband tells you that he no longer loves you standing in the middle of the damn street I think I would be filing for divorce straight away instead of doing his laundry so he can go back out on tour with his mistress.

Ian had mental problems, he had epilepsy too but often it seems like he used those conditions to manipulate the people around him and I wouldn't doubt if he sometimes faked fits to get out of situations. That possibility of faking fits was raised in the book too. Much of his mental problems could have been attributed to self-induced guilt, lying, affairs and maybe even hiding his own sexuality. The man brought many of the problems he had in life upon himself and responsibility was something he seemed to be allergic to.

After reading this book I cannot say that I learned anything good about Ian Curtis. I found it interesting that he would often visit gay bars in his teen years even with his wife, would go to gay parties and he and his wife would joke about him being gay. Ian was also a huge fan of David Bowie and Lou Reed in their glam rock days and would model his dress like them during his teenage years which was a very gender bending look. I have long harbored suspicions about Ian's sexuality so these interesting pieces of information of his time spent in the gay community raised those suspicions further. Even his mistress (this isn't from the book but a separate interview) Annik Honore' in an interview just before her death claimed that the relationship she had with Ian was strictly platonic and never once did they have sex - was she telling the truth?

Despite all of the negative details this book contains I still enjoyed reading it and read the entire book in one day. It isn't heavy reading and you can tell that Deborah Curtis isn't a professional writer but I give her credit for putting out this book if it helped her exorcise any burdens she may have carried since Ian's death in 1980.

I don't see Ian Curtis as some tragic hero/rock god/troubled soul after reading this book but as a young man that helped make some great music but ultimately had more problems than he was willing to face. I love the dark, post-punk music of Joy Division and for that I am thankful that it exists but I wish I knew less about Ian than I do now.

My favorite Joy Division songs are: Shadowplay, Disorder, Atrocity Exhibition and The Eternal.

Early December Reading & Music

In the past week I have finished off two books, Almost Transparent Blue and The Cement Garden. Though I enjoyed both books to varying degrees I can't say that either were books that I immensely loved.

I know when reading Japanese books or watching Japanese movies to expect unusual characters and situations when viewed from an American perspective and that is what I appreciate about them. I like life, people and ways of seeing that are different than mine and my world. Differences attract my attention.

 Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami published in 1976 certainly hit the mark in being another strange experience in Japanese culture. Right from the beginning the main character Ryu is shooting up heroin with his friends in the mid 1970s, using all sorts of drugs and partying like there is no other purpose in life. There are orgies involving American military personnel and Ryu is involved in all manner of sexual pleasure from both sexes (he seemed more like a closeted gay man than bisexual) and more drugs. The plot never strays from his friends and their drug use as it goes from one scene to the next there are more drugs. The story never goes anywhere and neither do the characters no matter the trouble they may get into is isn't very interesting and there's nothing much redeeming happening either.

I enjoyed the book nonetheless but I wish something, anything would have happened that made the book more worth my time.

I began reading The Cement Garden published in 1978 by Ian McEwan knowing what happens in the story because I had already seen the 1993 movie at least a couple of times. I liked the movie and thought the story and acting were compelling.

The story is about four kids (two girls and two boys) who become orphaned when both parents die. Rather than tell authorities when their last remaining parent dies they decide to hide the body in the cellar and continue living alone caring for themselves. They live in a large house in London in a neighborhood that is being leveled for new development and so their house becomes an isolated world surrounded by rubble and nearby apartment towers.

They manage on with their daily lives over a summer through complex relationships with their siblings and an older boyfriend of the oldest girl. The book is about isolation, grief, gender fluidity, gender roles, sex, trust and finally incest. Most of these issues are handled delicately and not in a very graphic manner.

If you've ever seen the movie then don't go into the book expecting to find any aspect of the story to be different. The movie was very faithful to the plot of the book. I did find that since the movie was so faithful to the book that there is very little insight to be gained about the characters having see the movie. Still, if you have never seen the movie then the book is worth reading and I also suggest the movie too.

Above is a photo of the cast from the movie version of The Cement Garden. If you notice on the far left that is singer/actor Charlotte Gainsbourg, she plays the role of the eldest female in the movie. Charlotte is of course also known as the daughter of the French legend Serge Gainsbourg.

I have enjoyed the music of Charlotte for years and just recently she released a new album which is excellent. The new album is called Rest. Here is one of the songs that I particularly enjoy from the new album called Ring-A-Ring O' Roses.



The guy in the video is absolutely adorable too and it is Charlotte's son.

Reading And Such

Over the last month I have picked up my reading pace again. I finished three books.

The last one completed was the one I enjoyed the most and that was Stasiland by Anna Funder. It appealed to me because of my interests in the former East Germany and the Berlin Wall. The book is more about the East German secret police known as the Stasi than it is about the Berlin Wall but you cannot write about East Germany without the wall being a central figure so there was plenty of interesting details that I learned from this book about the wall that I didn't know before.

One of the other books that I read was No One Left To Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton by Christopher Hitchens. My exposure to Hitchens had been his essays and watching appearances of his before he died and he and I share the same views on religion. This was the first book of his that I had read and while it was interesting and I mostly agree with him about Bill Clinton it wasn't all that great of a book. I don't believe in criticizing a person for their sexual desires and so much of this book focuses on just that. Hitchens does write about other criticisms he has of Clinton but there was too much time spent on his alleged affairs because I don't really care about that. I will have to give Hitchens another chance by reading some of his other books.

Lastly, the other book was Amusing Ourselves To Death: Public Discourse In The Age Of Show Business by Neil Postman. This book which is a critique of the television industry and what it does to society originally came out in 1985 and it is even more relevant today in the age of television and the internet. The basic idea is that television is bad for you and makes you dumber by watching it and that I agree with. I gave up all television years ago because I just cannot stand the shows and the ways news is presented today. My take on television news is that they spend more time giving opinions on the news than actual reportage of the news thus I read all my news. In the age of fake news and living in real life Idiocracy this book is a must read for its sanity. There may be all kinds of technological innovation in our lives but damn I feel like we are getting dumber and meaner as a society day by day.

Next up for me on the reading list is a Japanese book called Almost Transparent Blue. I enjoy Japanese literature and film so I am looking forward to starting this book this week.

And Such

I've been exploring the discography of the band Chumbawamba. They were mostly known for Tubthumping but their music was highly political. They were actually a bunch of anarchists so that's interesting and they made other good music than just their hit song. The two albums I have liked the most are Anarchy and Never Mind The Ballots...Here's The Rest Of Your Life. If you need some inspiration during these dark political times I suggest giving their music a try.

Music For The Deep End of the Ocean

I

n the early 2000's when my career and life were stressing me out I became interested in meditation. I do not know if I was ever successful at achieving any type of higher level of consciousness or insights, but I was able to relax.

 
I would meditate with music playing and sometimes with incense burning to help set the mood. One of the albums I regularly listened was 1984's The Pearl by Harold Budd and Brian Eno that was produced by Daniel Lanois. 

 
The Pearl is an ambient album that reminds me of floating in the ocean and staring upwards at the sky. Listening to it with closed eyes is like letting the music become the warm ocean water washing underneath your body as you drift aimlessly in the waves.

I stopped meditating for the last ten years or so because I could not make time for it or I just felt as though I did not need it any longer. Sometimes life takes us away from the things we need so that we can experience other aspects of life and that is what happened to me. Eventually or rather hopefully we return to the things that are good for us so now I am returning to meditation.

That return to meditation is what reminded me of The Pearl. I had long since forgotten this music until one day it reentered the forefront of my mind like an errand I had forgotten or a friend that had disappeared and then returned. Listening to it today, it still has the same peaceful calming effect that it did all those years ago.

Time slows down and then evaporates listening to this music, everything takes on a shade of blue and whatever was bothering me is lost in the deep end of the ocean of my mind.

My favorite track on the album is Late October followed by the title track The Pearl.

West End Girls

 

The Pet Shops Boys during filming of West End Girls.

 

The summer of 1986 was coming to an end as I was riding in the back of my father's van with my brother and two cousins. The radio was playing the latest hits from a station I liked called KZ 106. We were coming into the city of Chattanooga and the air was thick with smog; that summer had been miserably hot and stifling when on the radio came the new number one song in the country, West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys.

I heard it as a thirteen year old boy and thought, 'this is different and I like it.' There was something in the lead singer's voice that my ears picked up on that I identified with. I knew I was gay and my early teen gaydar was hearing something I liked.

That song and that moment has since been frozen in time in my mind. I can't hear that song today without going straight back to that polluted day in Chattanooga.

1986 was the year of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion that I watched live on television because I was home from school that day because of snow. It was the year of the Chernobyl explosion in the Soviet Union which still fascinates me today. Senile Reagan was President, cold hearted Thatcher was Prime Minister and Gorbachev was beginning to open up his country with glasnost. AIDS was still spreading like wildfire and was still largely misunderstood. I was in middle school, my parents were separated and this period to me felt dark and gloomy.

I was the nerdy gay kid in the gifted program living in the country thirty miles from Atlanta. I had already learned to never expect too much from the world, my parents had made sure of that. I had a girlfriend, but I was secretly eyeing all the boys in school and had many crushes hidden in my closet. I was starting to become fascinated by cities, distant places and like most teenagers music was where I escaped. I watched MTV every afternoon after school and every night listened to the Atlanta radio stations like Z-93 and Power 99. Radio and MTV were exciting and creative back in those days.

Scene from the music video.

 

Watching the video for West End Girls set on the streets of London you can see that gloominess that I associate with that time. It might have been gloomy but still it felt exciting to me. And seeing the faces that were behind the music of West End Girls confirmed my feelings that this was the music of my tribe and where I belonged.

This wasn't the shiny pop music of Madonna or Wham! and it wasn't about love or sex or partying but instead was about a city, that city being London. This song felt different to me. It felt different much like INXS from that same time period felt and sounded different to me when compared to what was dominating the airwaves at that time.

Little did I know at the time but the version of the song that would become a radio hit and launch the Pet Shop Boys wasn't the original version. The song had been previously recorded in New York in 1983 and then released in 1984. The original producer was Bobby Orlando who was well known for producing club music in the 80s.

The 1984 version of West End Girls became a hit in the gay clubs of San Francisco and Los Angeles. That club success however didn't translate to radio airplay.

The 1984 single cover for West End Girls.

Not seeing much success with the Bobby Orlando version of West End Girls it was recorded again and re-released in the fall of 1985 and that is the version that would reach number one in the U.K. and the United States.

I prefer the Bobby Orlando version though I also love the 1985 radio hit version too. The Bobby Orlando version sounded much more like a club song of the time, has a darker sound to it and the vocals are delivered in a more spoken/rap manner than sung.

The song resonates with me because of the lyrics that are about dissatisfaction, alienation and the overall mood of the song is dark. There was plenty of dissatisfaction to go around in U.K. society under Margaret Thatcher and her reforms to the public sector in the 80s. Thatcher made life miserable for many, many people much like Reagan.

"In a West End town, a dead end world
The East End boys and West End girls..."

This world and I have changed a vast amount since 1986 for better and worse, but I still love this song.

Hamilton Gardens On Lake Chatuge

Photo by me, September 2017.

In the garden more grows than the gardener sows. - Spanish proverb.

So on a warm September day I came to this small garden in Hiawassee, Georgia to walk and see what grew and what was in bloom. I expected not to find much in bloom knowing this garden is at its most showy in the spring. My expectation was met but even walking the wooded path next to the water was enough to enjoy.

Hamilton Gardens is a small garden tended to by volunteers pocketed into a spot next to the Georgia Mountain Fair, a lodge and on the banks of Lake Chatuge.

Lake Chatuge with its fancy sounding name is in the far reaches of North Georgia and as the water recognizes no artificial line on a map it covers portions of North Carolina too. Chatuge was created in the early 1940s to control flooding and to produce emergency power during wartime operations in World War Two. The fancy name it bears I had often wondered if it were French but like many places in these mountains it is named after a Cherokee Indian village that had been there.

The Stovall Mill Covered Bridge

Photo by me, September 2017.

On a piece of bottom land lying between Lynch Mountain and Grimes Nose in White County near the Habersham County line and in the community of Sautee Nacoochee flows Chickamauga Creek. Highway 255 crosses Chickamauga Creek just beyond Penny Lane and if you are traveling east on 255 you should look to the right very quickly or you might miss an old covered bridge that's in terrible disrepair.

This is the Stovall Mill Covered Bridge. The mill and dam that once accompanied the covered bridge were washed away in 1964. The old bridge that has been standing here since 1895 was replaced by a concrete bridge a few yards away in 1959 and the road has been straightened out and paved since then too. So the old Stovall Mill Covered Bridge sits there off to the side of the road in the shade trees collecting graffiti from the locals on dark nights.

Brasstown Bald

 

Brasstown Bald in the fall as seen from the parking area near the summit. Photo by me, October 2013.

Fall begins today so in the spirit of the coming cooler weather, brilliant colors and more time spent in the mountains I thought today would be a good day to write about Georgia's highest mountain, Brasstown Bald.

Brasstown Bald is an interesting name for a mountain. You wouldn't generally think of brass when you think of mountains and how it came to be called that name in English was a mistake. Prior to being settled by Europeans this area was already inhabited by the Cherokee tribe and they referred to the area as "place of fresh green." The word sounded like the English word for "brass" and so a misunderstanding lead to the unique name. The "bald" is commonly used to describe an area on a mountain with a view of three hundred and sixty degrees.

The road leading up the parking area at the gift shop/office. Photo by me, April 2014.

To get to the top of the mountain there are two ways: you can drive to near the summit and then take a shuttle operated by the U.S. Forest Service from the gift shop and office (cost $5 per person for a round trip ride) or you can hike to the top via two different trails from two different directions.

 

A large inflatable Smokey The Bear welcomes you to the parking area. Photo by me, October 2013.

I have never hiked to the top of Brasstown, though I would like to do that one day, and have on my visits driven to the gift shop and taken the shuttle.

The geographical background on Brasstown Bald is that it is part of the Appalachian Mountain chain that extends from North Georgia into southeastern Canada. Brasstown rises to 4,784 feet above sea level in elevation. It is located in far northeastern Georgia and straddles both Union and Towns counties. The next highest mountain in the state is Rabun Bald at 4,696 feet above sea level in Rabun County.

 

The visitor's center at the summit. Photo by me, October 2013.

 

Once you arrive at the top of the mountain either by shuttle or by foot you are dropped off at the visitor's center which contains a museum and observation tower.

Quilts and bears, oh my! Photo by me, October 2013.

 

Photo by me, October 2013.

 

Photo by me, October 2013.

Stuffed bears, Georgia has a sizeable population of live ones, on display along with some beautiful quilts in the museum.

 

Photo by me, October 2013.

There is even a train on display. This is a replica of the steam locomotive train the Climax that was used in the mountains in the logging industry. You can learn more about this train here. 

A suspicious looking forest firefighter. Photo by me, October 2013.

He's harmless. Photo by me, October 2013.

These two displays were great with the animatronics. They look crazy and might even scare your kids when they begin talking, moving and those eyes they have.

To be isolated atop the highest mountain in the state, the museum is quite good and filled with historical items and informational displays about the mountain and the area. This would be the highest museum in the state. They also show a short film about the mountain and it is interesting to see how harsh the weather can get this high into the sky.

But of course the main reason to visit Brasstown Bald is for the view.

 

Photo by me, October 2013.

 

Photo by me, October 2013.

Photo by me, October 2013.

Photo by me, October 2013.

Photo by me, October 2013.

For a first time visitor, I recommend going to Brasstown Bald in the fall when the leaves are at peak typically during the month of October, but this can vary from year to year. Brasstown is an interesting attraction any season, but expect the largest crowds during the fall. You will find it much less busy during the winter when the trees are bare and the landscape is mostly gray but visibility is often the best on a crisp winter day. During the summer it is a nice way to escape the summer heat but visibility may be limited by the haze. In spring it is a good way to see two seasons at once when the valleys below are turning green from the new spring leaves while the mountain tops are still locked in winter hibernation.

In winter and the early spring it is advisable to check the weather conditions atop the mountain before planning a visit. Snow and ice is more common than one might think and you can find the mountain road closed at the base or that the shuttle is not in service to the summit from the gift shop. I speak from experience, I have been up to the mountain in the second week of April only to find that the shuttle was not running due to ice and snow. You can of course always still make the hike to the top as the trails are never closed.

 

Ice and snow cover the mountain laurel and trees at one end of the parking area. Photo by me, April 2014.

Snow and rain fall on the distant mountain tops. Photo by me, April 2014.

 

The summit of Brasstown Bald hidden the clouds and snow as seen from the parking area. Photo by me, April 2014.

This is how it looked in the second week of April 2014 when the shuttle was not running. It was completely deserted and the top of the mountain was shrouded in the clouds. The wind that day was howling and it would have been a rough day atop the mountain if I had decided to hike up beyond the parking area near the summit, which I didn't.

I hope you have a great fall enjoying the leaves, the cooler weather and hitting the trails.

Link to the official U.S. Forest Service page for Brasstown Bald. Streaming web cam from the top facing north.
Streaming web cam from the top facing south.

Tigerlily: This Star Fell Down

Iremember the 1990s in a way that others may not. I remember it in two halves: there is Pre-Cobain and Post-Cobain. For me the most important person of the 90s wasn't Bill Clinton or any other politician but Kurt Cobain. I don't believe any other person had a greater cultural impact on that decade than Cobain. His rise to fame and his tragic suicide set the tone for how I remember the 1990s. I'll never forget being so excited for a band in my life and I'll never forget that afternoon a month after my birthday in 1994 that his body was discovered in Seattle and the world changed.

Tigerlily was released in 1995 and was the fist solo album of Natalie Merchant after leaving the band 10,000 Maniacs. It was the best album Post-Cobain in the 1990s. While Nevermind was the best album of the entire decade, Tigerlily was the best album for the rest of it. I spent more time listening to this album than any other album then and I still listen to it regularly twenty-two years later.

In 1995 I had moved into a loft in an 1920s former automobile factory. It had walls of windows that were the original factory ones and I would sit and listen to this album and look out that wall of windows on Ponce de Leon Avenue in Atlanta. I loved to sit there on gray winter days and look out to the east over Green's Package Store and the Clermont Hotel. Tigerlily took me places in my mind that I could never voice but I knew I felt.

Cobain may have been the one to sing, "I miss the comfort in being sad," but Merchant was the one to sing damn you liar you betrayed me and I'm not going to forgive. This is an album full of sadness, fear, doubt, anger, betrayal, deep love that clings to your bones and tiny slices of hope. This is an album filled with mourning about failures and maybe represents the disillusionment of Generation X - that we weren't going to be as happy and successful as our parents. All of these things were the 1990s and how Generation X lost their innocence.

There is a confrontational tone to this album and it isn't about giving up, nor giving into indifference but telling the truth no matter how evil and ugly it is and that is why I love it.