Little known, except by musicians, Danny Gatton was a musician’s musician. He loved playing the telecaster, rebuilding antique cars, staying around the D.C. area and just being a shy “good-old boy.”
Danny Gatton has been described as possessing an extraordinary proficiency on his instrument, “a living treasury of American musical styles.”In 2009, John Previti, who played bass guitar with Danny for 18 years stated: “You know, when he played country music, it sounded like all he played was country music. When he played jazz, it sounded like that’s all he played, rockabilly, old rock and roll, soul music. You know, he called himself a Whitman sampler of music Legendary guitarist Steve Vai reckons Danny “comes closer than anyone else to being the best guitar player that ever lived.”Accomplished guitar veteran Albert Lee said of Gatton: “Here’s a guy who’s got it all.”
Gatton shot himself in his garage, October 4, 1994 at the young age of 59 — he left no explanation. All great artists seem to possess a spooky fatalism, a sense of the duende down deep in the soul.
The goblets of the dawn break. The crying of the guitar starts. No use to stop it. It is impossible to stop it.
I write not because of an ability, but because of an inspiration, a magic, a fire inside that garners an alliance with my demons and angels.
“Thus duende is a power and not a behavior,
it is a struggle and not a concept. I have heard an old master guitarist say: ‘Duende is not in the throat;
duende surges up from the soles of the feet.’ Which means it is not a matter of ability,
but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action.”
— Federico Garcia Lorca
#####
conversations lost
conversations from the past lost in the images of memories amassed only to return on the backs of death resurrected by poets serving only to introduce images of what was like water returning from a fountain’s reservoir only to be reborn again and again and again
Invoking the Mystery By Giving Of One’s Time — Computer Painting by kenne
(The following was first posted on September 26, 2009, on this blog. In the process of writing about my dear friend, Linda Ricketts, who passed away recently, I was doing a tab search on this blog when this posting was among those identified. So much has happened in the intervening years that make the premise of “Invoking the Mystery” even more critical and timely, especially with the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United.)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” comprises members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with age accepting the reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand many of today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a problem of design. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. Instead, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather-Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy –- doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local, sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkoff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which the book is mostly about, and pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching…. Therefore, this book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy. This book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires — “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to gather the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace. In that case, we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
Life and art are defined by what lies between light and shadows. In Holland Cotter’s April 30, 2007 article in the New York Times, he wrote “A certain slant of light was Edward Hopper’s thing. And he made it our thing, hard-wired it into our American brains:”
Every since seeing Edward Hopper’s, “Nighthawks” at the Art Institute of Chicago, as a young man, I have been seduced by his work — not because he hard-wired my brain, but because of the human ability to distinguish between an object and its background. It is the contrast between light and shadows that catches the eye, which is why Hopper’s work is so seductive — it the essence of the “Hopper Effect: the impression of everyday life touched with secular sanctity. “
Poet L.E. Sissman was so captivated by Hopper’s work that he wrote “American Light: A Hopper Retrospective”. Written in five parts, the first part subtitled, “Hopper”.
A man, a plan, a spandrel touched with fire, A morning-tinted cornice, a lit spire, A clapboard gable beetled with the brow- Shadows of lintels, a glazed vacancy In shut-up shopfronts, an ineffably Beautiful emptiness of sunlight in Bare rooms of which he was the sole inhabitant: The morning and the evening of his life Rotated, a lone sun, about the plinth On which he stood in granite, limned by light That lasted on day long and then went out.
Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”
Yes, it’s all about what falls between the light and the shadows, as Joyce Carol Oats writes on Hopper’s “Nighthawks” in Transforming Vision – Writers on Art:
The three men are fully clothed, long sleeves, even hats, though it’s indoors, and brightly lit, and there’s a women. The woman is wearing a short-sleeved red dress cut to expose her arms, a curve of her creamy chest; she’s contemplating a cigarette in her right hand, thinking that her companion has finally left his wife but can she trust him? Her heavy-lidded eyes,
pouty lipsticked mouth, she has the redhead’s
true pallor like skill milk, damned good-looking
and she guesses she knows it but what exactly
has it gotten her so far, and where? — he’ll start
to feel guilty in a few days, she knows
the signs, an actual smell, sweaty, rancid, like
dirty socks; he’ll slip away to make telephone calls. . .
“. . . People the vacuum with American light.” — the last line in T.S. Sissman’s poem on Edward Hopper.
“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge…” — Rod Serling, Twilight Zone.
I feel that in the images I capture, I’m always trying to capture that middle ground between light and shadow — maybe Edward Hopper was too.
Some may think of the space between light and the shadow as the twilight zone, I think of it as what the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca called duende, which as Edward Hirsch has put it, “. . . it makes something visible that might otherwise be invisible, that has been swimming under the surface all along.”
Last night I spent over three hours watching the documentary, “History of The Eagles.” I love every minute of it!
The documentary, which had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival last January, is in two parts and is currently on Showtime and can be purchased on DVD, or streamed — there are so many options in today’s digital would.
Like most rock ‘n roll bands, much of their creativity comes from the battles with their demons, which are the vital spirits of creative imagination. For me their music takes the listener to an extrasensory event that is seeking Lorca’s “Duende,” ” . . a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is alive, all that the performer is creating at a certain moment.” This is what makes music intoxicating.
So, “What’s with the rusty old tractor?” you ask.
One of the things that stood out the most in the Eagles documentary was something Don Henley said near the end, when he referenced a Neil Young quote about quitting before you rust. The reference was about music, or was it?
Most of us who have lived with the music of the Eagles are beginning to feel old and rusty, but Henley put a new perspective on it:
“I don’t see rust as a bad thing. I have an old 1962 John Deere tractor that’s covered in rust, but it runs like a top. You know the inner workings are just fine. To me, that rust symbolizes all the work done and all the experiences gained. From where I sit, rust looks pretty good.”
Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before “Relax, ” said the night man, “We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave! “
— from the Eagles, “Hotel California”
kenne
Glenn Fry and Don Henley of The Eagles — Sam Jones/Showtime
One of the best covers of an Eagles song is that of Tucson native, Linda Ronstadt – Desperado (Simple Dreams Tour – Atlanta 1977)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” is made up of members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with the age-accepting reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for the September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a design problem. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. However, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to travel between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy – doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “… express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spread. Rushkoff gives many examples of sustainable local efforts that trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. Giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkroff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which is what the book is mostly about, but also pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching….This book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy, and this book explains why and builds on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we feel as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires, “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to invoke the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice. In that case, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace, so we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that for many who may take a road-trip vacation, tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat, rather than going to a local establish. If this is your comfort level, then you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. This is where, according to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather Sealed blog, you will be hurtin’ is you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentally and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my live and my fortune is controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard becoming part of the gift economy – doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “… express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where the exchange of goods and services are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost, by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkroff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s wonderful book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance is even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which is what the book is mostly about, but also pure science, spiritual life, healing and teaching….This book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy, and this book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale, “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes in order to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he is referring to human endeavor such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has it’s own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires, “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to invoke the duende.
If we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate market place, then it is necessary that we find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
Honey Bee On Arizona Fleabane — Digital Art by kenne
Pondering the Duende — Image by kenne
Trails leading to a world as in Federico Garcia Lorca’s “waltzing, sexy, high-spirited, deathward-leaning proclamations of love.”
Morning Passion — Images by kenne
Between Light and Shadows — Image by kenne
Old Rusty Tractor — Image by kenne
Glenn Fry and Don Henley of The Eagles — Sam Jones/Showtime
Becoming is Superior to Being 
(The following was first posted on September 26, 2009, on this blog. In the process of writing about my dear friend, Linda Ricketts, who passed away recently, I was doing a tab search on this blog when this posting was among those identified. So much has happened in the intervening years that make the premise of “Invoking the Mystery” even more critical and timely, especially with the Supreme Court’s deeply flawed 2010 decision in Citizens United.)
The book club to which I belong, “The Society of the 5th Cave,” comprises members, all-be-it old educated professionals, males who pride themselves in being specialists in many areas, but with age accepting the reality of being skilled in few. Mostly politically right of center seeking to help me see the light, convinced that those with opposing views are also conducting their act of ministry. Wrong, oh truth sayers! Although I may debate a position, I don’t want everyone to agree with me, and I want each person to think. That’s why I selected Life Inc. How The World Became A Corporation And How To Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff for September reading. (Click here to see Rushkoff on Colbert Nation.) It is a book that can help people better understand many of today’s economic and financial issues, which Rushkoff feels are not a problem of reality or nature but a problem of design. Are corporations evil? No! Neither are the people who work within their controlling environments. Instead, there is a convincing case to be made for redesigning a poorly designed invention of our culture by identifying non-market ways of developing gift-exchange institutions.
We humanize the corporation, so much so that many who may take a road-trip vacation tend to seek out a McDonald’s in which to eat rather than going to a local establishment. If this is your comfort level, you don’t want to be traveling between the tiny Dakotan hamlets of Meadow and Glad Valley. According to Stephen Von Worley on the Weather-Sealed blog, this is where you will be hurtin’ if you suffer a Big Mac Attack.
Most of us are products of the corporate mentality and lifestyle. I have worked hard to get to an age where I’ve collected enough assets to make money by having money. Even though recognizing that my life and my fortune are controlled and manipulated by our corporate state, I’m now working hard to become part of the gift economy –- doing something for nothing and stop behaving like corporations who “express charitable and community impulses from afar.” A gift economy is a society where goods and services are exchanged without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
“By donating to charities in the same manner as our corporate equivalents, we succumb to the proxy system that dissocializes in the first place.” Instead, we can start reclaiming what has been lost by accepting that small is the new big and that through a highly networked world, we can begin making local impacts that it spreads. Rushkoff gives many examples of local, sustainable efforts that effectively trickle up in profound ways. The more we network doing something for nothing, the more one voluntary act encourages another. The act of giving is a social phenomenon that should be a fundamental life skill. As Walt Whitman wrote in Carol of Words: “The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him – it cannot fail.”
Rushkoff’s belief that commerce has been separated from the people who are doing the stuff and his reference to the gift economy brought to mind Lewis Hyde’s excellent book, The Gift – Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Written over twenty-seven years ago, his insight and guidance are even more apropos given today’s economic and financial challenges. Here is how Hyde summarizes The Gift:
“The main assumption of the book is that certain spheres of life, which we care about, are not well organized by the marketplace. That includes artistic practice, which the book is mostly about, and pure science, spiritual life, healing, and teaching…. Therefore, this book is about the alternative economy of artistic practice. For most artists, the actual working life of art does not fit well into a market economy. This book explains why and builds out on the alternative, which is to imagine the commerce of art to be well described by gift exchange.”
In his chapter titled “The Labor of Gratitude,” Hyde uses the folk tale “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” a tale of a gifted person, as a model of the labor of gratitude. In the tale, the shoemaker makes his first pair of shoes to dress the elves, which is the last act in his labor of gratitude. When Hyde speaks of labor, he refers to human endeavors such as “writing a poem, raising a child, developing a new calculus, resolving a neurosis, invention in all forms,” as distinguished from “work,” that we do by the hour. Labor has its own schedule. Things are accomplished, but often we as if wasn’t us who did them. This is always a bit mysterious. It is the mystery Federico Garcia Lorca was referring to when he wrote at the bottom of one of his drawings he did in Buenos Aires — “Only mystery enables us to live.” Invoking the mystery is to gather the Duende.
Suppose we value the mystery and the categories of human enterprise that invoke the mystery, such as family life, spiritual life, public service, pure science, and artistic practice, none of which operates well in the corporate marketplace. In that case, we must find non-corporate ways to organize and support them.
— kenne
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