Tom Watson

I Feel a Change Comin' On

At this stage, the Bob Dylan test is simple: listen to a new record a few times and before you make your judgment, pretend it's the work of a largely unknown old circuit rider named Robby Zimmerman playing bars and beer halls with his traveling blues band in the upper midwest.

Then decide.

By the high cultural standards generally ascribed to America's generational poet, Dylan's unexpected new album Together Through Life is light and occasionally pleasing, an interesting fourth record in a blues-based "comeback" that begin with his Grammy-winning Time Out of Mind in 1997. To Dylanologists and obsessive critics, it'll never make the canon.

But to anyone scuffling through the the hard rain of springtime, 2009, the new Dylan record is a low and pleasing rumble of traditional blues and front parlor numbers, latched to the back-end of a cross country semi hauling one hell of a groove across the American wasteland. If this were the work of an unknown veteran, in other words, the critics would be patting themselves on the back for their tremendous taste and ability to spot a new talent.

About that groove: the guitar work of Heartbreaker Mike Campbell and the accordion of Los Lobos' David Hidalgo weave a border cafe filigree of melody and rhythm, while Dylan's touring band - bassist Tony Garnier, drummer George Recile, and Donnie Herron on banjo, steel guitar and mando - lay down a rich bed of sound that's part vintage Chess sides and part nouveau Texas swing.

Dylan's voice has never been scruffier, a lonely warble grooved with years aural scars. But in other ways, his singing hasn't been this good in a decade. It's crisply enunciated. And the singer sells the songs completely, even though most of the lines turn downward these days at the end, the antithesis of the characteristic upward snarl of "how does it feel?"

This 67-year-old Dylan knows how it feels and the songs - mostly co-written with lyricist Robert Hunter - tell small and personal stories. Dark tales with dark humor and lost dreams: Dylan knows it's late in his game (and perhaps ours as well). "I feel a change comin' on and the fourth part of the day's already gone," he sings over happy upbeat blues on the record's best song. Then he adds: "I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I'm reading James Joyce/Some people they tell me I’ve got the blood of the land in my voice.”

That he does. Most critics thought Dylan had finished his late-career blue trilogy (which also included Love and Theft from 2001 and Modern Times in 2006), but as Dylan sings in Jolene on the new disk: "I keep my hands in my pocket, I'm moving along, people think they know, but they're all wrong."

[Cross-posted from newcritics.com]

April One-Five - 1947 and 2009

The most beautiful view last night at Citi Field, the Mets' new ballpark in Queens, was the pre-game shot on the massive centerfield video screen of Rachel Robinson, resplendent at age 86 and a glowing, regal presence during the opening game ceremonies honoring the 62nd anniversary of her late husband's gift to the American nation. On a day that saw thousands of dead-enders, 9/11 conspiracy fanatics, immigrant haters and keyboard revolutionaries "rally" against the American form of representative democracy in so-called "tea parties" around the country, you got the feeling that Rachel Robinson could walk into any of these surly mobs in Cincinnati or St. Louis or Pasadena and part the waters of intolerance by the force of elegance and history alone.

Some conservative bloggers think baseball's annual tribute to Jackie Robinson is "over the top" and has "reached the point of absurdity," and perhaps they've got a point: teams should stick to their increasingly corporate business plans and steroid-damaged product, rather than pausing once a year to recognize the one true American baseball hero, who first suited up in Major League flannels 62 years ago yesterday. Let April 15th merely pass as tax day, when all ballclubs can cheer their anti-trust exemption and most can toast their tax incentives and stadium construction deals paid for by the American dime.

Yet last night, from my top-deck seats in the relatively modest and intimate taxpayer-assisted Citi Field - built on the Fitzgerald's Valley of the Ashes next to the No. 7 line in the former parking lot of the now-deceased Shea Stadium - the Robinson-flavored celebration was perfectly pitched to our times: a relatively subtle yet urgent tug on the sleeves of younger generations. That tug suggests a pause to consider the ideals Robinson embodied, as well as his evident humanity and brilliant baseball skill. Sketched around the outside wall of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, the Mets' main entryway built to evoke the ghost of Ebbetts Field in the neighboring borough, is the man's famed epitaph: "A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives."

Robinson was famously a Republican, of course - but more of the Rockefeller variety, and he destroyed William F. Buckley on his own Firing Line program in 1964 by arguing forcefully (and accurately) that the John Birch wing of the party was dominated by racists. The former Dodger remembered the encounter with pride in his autobiography: "A man who prides himself on coming out of verbal battle cool, smiling, and victorious, he lost his calm, became snappish and irritated, and, when the show was over and everyone else was shaking hands, got up and strode angrily out of the studio."

April 15th was the day Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, but the entire 1947 season was his long trial, and into retirement he continued to civil rights and tolerance in tough but civil discourse. As his widow spoke about his legacy in Queens to a crowd of Mets fan that included my son (who reveres Jackie Robinson as his personal hero and raced down the aisle to snap a cellphone shot of Mrs. Robinson on the field) the recalcitrant and long-growing roots of American intolerance sent up a few shoots into the spring sun shine. You probably saw some of the "Tea Party" signs, and reached for your trusty weed-wacker (or felt the sudden need for a shower):

"Wake Up! Fresh Prince of Belair (sic) is Destroying Us -- Stop Drinking the Red Koolaid."

Obama's Plan: White Slavery

Somewhere in Kenya a Village is Missing itsw Idiot

The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama's Ovens

Obama Socialist Pig

Ostensibly an anti-tax movement in the long tradition of anti-tax movements in this country, yesterday's pathetic teafest was in reality just an excuse to vent: frustration at the failure of the conservative movement and the end of Reagan revolution, anger at the incompetence of the Republican leadership and the rise of the Democrats, some legitimate frustration with massive tax-funded corporate bailouts - and a whole lotta good old-fashioned Confederate flag-waving American intolerance, keyed to the inescapable fact that the President of the United States is not a white man.

Numbers guru Nate Silver estimated the total turnout nationally for the Fox-driven, Republican approved Tea Parties at around 250,000 people. Small, when you consider some of the largest protests in recent American life - the ones in favor of immigration, as James Wolcott recalled:

It's remarkable and telling how some of the biggest peaceful political rallies this country has ever seen took place only three years ago, only to be flushed down the memory hole. I'm speaking of the tremendous pro-immigration rallies that took place in 2006, with an estimated half-million people assembling in downtown Los Angeles alone. Those rallies did not lack energy, enthusiasm, or organization, and I daresay among those hundreds of thousands of people lobbying for enlightened immigration legislation were low-income workers with "real jobs."

As Al Giordano noted, the tea-baggers - steeped in stupidity, I just can't help it - lacked any kind of thematic coherence: "They’ve served up a menu of (some of them contradictory) complaints and conspiracy theories (some rail against “socialism” and “world government,” with large doses of the same paranoia and victimhood of that kept the United States left self-marginalized for three decades and more until now)."

Sure, some of the turn-out was driven by legitimate concerns about government spending on the propping up of failed finance companies; and the campaign of Rep. Ron Paul for President last year attracted some intellectually consistent (if wrong-headed) small-government conservatism. Yet Paul's campaign was also a mirror to yesterday's "tax" protests," in the form of a wild mish-mash of anger-driven reactionary sloganeering and hate speech riding shotgun next to the libertarians.

Some unfortunate Republican pols mistook it for some kind of right-wing grassroots tsunami that would flood the voting booths with anti-Federalist voters who don't want roads or cops or teachers or stimulus spending. They lumbered to the barricades of American dis-Union, like comic book versions of their 1861 predecessors - only to find themselves windmilling like Wile E. Coyote over the precipice when they realized they appeared foolish.

But you know how it goes. Once secesh, always secesh.

I don't think Jackie Robinson would be particularly surprised that one corner of mainstream Republican political action is still driven by intolerance. I do think he'd be gratified how that small that hate-driven movement is.

***

Kelsey and No. 42, originally uploaded by Tom Watson.

Some notes on Citi Field: It's a fine ballpark, scaled for baseball rather than majestic brand-building, and filled with nooks and crannies - and decent food.

By far the worst part of the new stadium is (ironically, considering yesterday's Robinson festivities) the overt class segregation for ticket holders. While it pales against the moat (I kid you not) that the Yankees built to keep the unwashed from the high-rolling swells on the field level of faux Yankee Stadium, the class lines at Citi Field are nonetheless onerous and do not do the team's ownership or its municipal funding partners proud. The best seats behind the plate are predictably padded, wider, serviced by waiters and cut off from the rest of blue and orange humanity - and, quite noticeably on television, oftentimes empty of paying customers. Several clubs featuring bars and food service are available only to patrons who hold a certain ticket level. They too (I peeked in the doors) are half-empty and have to be costing ownership more than they bring in in bar bills. Given the bailout money that flows from Citicorp to the team, I expect either the Obama Administration or New York State Attorney General Andrew to open those no-go areas forthwith, or fire the team's management. (Or not).

So the Mets built parts of their ballpark for the economic era just ended, when a certain percentage of patrons would think nothing of dropping several grand at the game. That's the bad news. The good news is that the Mets limited the hoi polloi seclusion, and built an intimate 40,000-seat park that has plenty of great sitelines, interesting angles, and fun places from which to watch the game and do what Mets fans did at Shea Stadium for four decades: kvetch cheerily about the Mets. My seats are in the upper deck, second to last row of the stadium - yet they're closer to the field than most of the seats in the old middle deck at Shea. The main field level concourse is wide open: anyone with a ticket can traverse the full 360 degrees around the field, and the game is visible for most of the walk.

Particularly in the new outfield areas, beyond the black and orange fences (a hat tip to the old New York Giants), the Mets have convincingly slammed a hanging curve. They're terrific - very open, replete with wiffle ball for the kiddies, and filled with New York food outlets like Blue Smoke and Shake Shack and authentic ethnic grub. As my son said last night: centerfield is like a Mets carnival before every game. And "Pepsi Porch" overhangs rightfield like the old Tiger Stadium; Carlos Delgado hit a majestic drive up there to cap the Mets first win in the new park.

I was looking around from my high perch last night and the panoramic view beyond the stadium seemed emblematic of the place, moving counter-clockwise from my right: the old Iron Triangle of chop shops and muffler joints in rotting Quonset huts, the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges in the distance, the water of Flushing Bay twinkling below the jetliners cruising into LaGuardia, the distant skyline of Manhattan on clear evening, the Arthur Ashe Tennis Center just beyond the subway el, and just past that, the old Unisphere of the '64 World's Fair. A view Robert Moses would certainly have approved of.

But also the right view for the Mets, whose comfort in "second team" status to the conglomerate Yankees now seems both apparent and somewhat charming. It's very much a National League park for New York: all steel trusses and dark seats and out of town scores, and boisterous fans streaming in from the bridges and the subway. Unlike the Woodlawn-worthy slab of granite across town, Citi Field looks forward despite its name and its awkward class-conscious grabs for the high-rollers - it plays lightly with history, and roots along with the fans.

Still Catholic After All These Years...

Trinity College spring, originally uploaded by Tom Watson.

A couple of weeks back, I met a friend for lunch downtown and wondered at the choice - an East Village UK-style pub, replete with an iconic red phone box out front. Fair enough, but an interesting choice of venue. I was early and perusing the menu when I realized at an instant why we were there. The famous fish and chips, halfway down the menu.

Of course. It was Friday. In Lent. And we're both Catholics.

Not the daily Mass sort, yet the culture is so strong, so nearly biological, that it still persuades secularists to traipse at least at least an extra subway stop to avoid a meaty midday repast during the period of Lenten sacrifice that will conclude next Sunday. Palm Sunday is tomorrow, and Holy Week follows - concluding that particularly New York version of the liturgical calendar that adds the green of St. Patrick's Day to the purple of the passion play.

On Ash Wednesday, one of my favorite bloggers, Lance Mannion, wrote about his formal break with the Catholic Church, noting that he'd been "holding onto my faith by the threads of a frayed alb anyway." Lance's post plumbed some of the gnawing away of formal church-based hierarchical religion in this country, but I was also struck by one of the comments: "I haven't been to Church in years. But I'm STILL a Catholic." And that blend of personal cultural and religious self-identification, which riles traditional (and conservative) Roman Catholics, hasn't lost its power. Reading Lance's Lenten post (and it was a Lenten post because Lance is still a Catholic) called to mind the lyrics of punk poet Jim Carroll's Catholic Boy from 1980:

And they can't touch me now
I got every sacrament behind me
I got baptism, I got penance
I got communion, I got extreme unction
Man, I've got confirmation

I was a Catholic boy
Redeemed through pain
And not through joy

And now I'm a Catholic man
I put my tongue to the rail whenever I can

Patti Smith, the force behind Carroll's angry, poetic record, was a Jehovah's Witness - at least until she hit New York, and quickly adopted Catholicism (the cultural variety) as the perfect canvas for poetry. Is there a more Catholic opening line to a song from 1970s than Smith's iconic "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine?"

That the song was a reinvention of Van Morrison's Gloria added to the hymnal quality - Patti clearly leaning on the in excelsis Deo side of the double meaning, fresh from posing as Mary Magdalene for Robert Mapplethorpe, himself an Irish Catholic divorced by sexuality yet entirely married in culture and personal reference. This was a common formula in 1970s New York. In 1973, Staten Island Catholic boy David Johansen asked with mock incredulity: "Then all the old ladies they are on their way to the church...yuh go ta church?" That same year, St. Rose of Lima Catholic grammar school graduate Bruce Springsteen cracked, "Nuns run bald through Vatican halls pregnant, pleadin' immaculate conception" in Lost in the Flood.

I grew up on this stuff, in the years just after my service as an altar boy, and the incense never quite abandons the cultural DNA, even after the orthodoxy has fled; I've observed the same phenomenon among non-observant Jews who'll still place the pebble on the headstone every time. You can't shake childhood, and in middle age, it's surprising what remains of the old relationship with the cassock and the ritual. Skinny young heretics like Bruce Springsteen harbor second thoughts in the years of thickening middles - witness his 2005 conversation on Devils & Dust:

In the garden at Gethsemane
He prayed for the life he'd never live,
He beseeched his Heavenly Father to remove
The cup of death from his lips

Now there's a loss that can never be replaced,
A destination that can never be reached,
A light you'll never find in another's face,
A sea whose distance cannot be breached

Well Jesus kissed his mother's hands
Whispered, "Mother, still your tears,
For remember the soul of the universe
Willed a world and it appeared."

Another of my favorite bloggers, M.A. Peel, also had an Ash Wednesday post at the beginning of this Lenten season, linking this period of contemplation for Catholics to the world's crisis: "Avarice is a mortal sin - the wisdom of that classification is now sadly clear." And she posted a video and lyrics to the song Hallelujah by the brilliant singer/songwriter Rufus Wainright, culturally Irish Catholic on his mother's side and quite conscious of it:

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

As my own children make their sacraments and some days are a struggle to reconcile their upbringing with my thin personal faith and disdain for the patriarchy of the formal religion, Wainright's words ring like communion bells. The shadows and doubts and reason are all our own. I'm not alone, I think, in harboring an entirely personal relationship with a formal religion - or thinking the blaze of light is my own. No less of a  church-goer than John Updike riffed on that individuality of faith and identify when he accepted an award as a prominent Christian writer by a Catholic magazine in 1997:

“St. Augustine was not the first Christian writer nor the last to give us the human soul with its shadows, its Rembrandtesque blacks and whites, its chiaroscuro; this sense of ourselves, as creatures caught in the light, whose decisions and recognitions have a majestic significance, remains to haunt non-Christians as well, and to form, as far as I can see, the raison d’être of fiction.”

Updike's identity, his Christianity, was portrayed in doubt and human failing wonderment, in the brutal light of clear-eyed observation and realism (very Catholic in practice). On his deathbed, in what may be the most moving pages of verse to grace an American magazine in a century, Updike didn't shy away for a moment from either the doubt or the faith:

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tong reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely - magnificent, that "surely" -
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the ays of my life, my life, forever.

When I was in Oxford last week, I stayed in student lodgings at Trinity College that were nicer than any hotel room I've ever seen in London. Trinity College was founded by Sir Thomas Pope in 1555. A devout catholic with no surviving children, Thomas Pope saw the Foundation of an Oxford college as a means of ensuring that he and his family would always be remembered in the prayers and masses of its members.

The gardens at Trinity are very beautiful, but one border of the College harbors a little secret: the gates constructed along Parks Road are purely ornamental and are never opened. Tradition holds they're only swung open when a Jacobite monarch resumes the throne of England (and presumably ends the reign of the Church of England as the state religion). While I was there, the news was full of talk about PM Gordon Brown's move to overturn the part of the 1701 Act of Settlement that bans Catholics from marrying into the royal family. Maybe the gates of Parks Road will be opened sooner rather than later, I thought, my Catholic upbringing going off like a ring tone set to the Angelus.

Flying home last week, I found myself 40,000 feet over the North Atlantic, wedged into what American Airlines dashingly refers to as a "seat" and holding onto sanity only by dint of the seatback video movies. The dinner cart came along. It was Friday. The choice came: "chicken or pasta?" And there, in some pain and without a conscious inkling, the DNA of the catechism kicked into autopilot:

"Pasta," says I, only vaguely aware of my current timezone.