Etta James 1938-2012

Her voice, loss, recovery, passion, life.

Paying her dues. Singing her blues.

"She was able to dig so deep in kind of such a raw and unguarded place when she sang, and that's the power of gospel and blues and rhythm and blues. She brought that to all those beautiful standards and rocks songs that she did.

"All the number of vast albums she recorded, she covered such a wide variety of material that brought such unique phrasing and emotional depth," said Bonnie Raitt, a close friend, in an interview on Friday afternoon after James' death.

"I think that's what appealed to people, aside from the fact that her personality on and off the stage was so huge and irrepressible. She was ribald and raunchy and dignified, classy and strong and vulnerable all at the same time, which is what us as women really relate to."

See and hear:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADDigK8LwyE&feature=related

Celebrate

May this find you celebrating life holidays with friends, family and complete strangers in beauty and mystery. Elf trusts your 2011 was filled with blessings and peace.

A traveling Elf completed 84 days at a private elementary school in Vientiane, Laos.

29 teachers taught Elf how to focus and pay attention.

Kill the television and distracting electronic gadgets, they said. Laughing.

They taught Elf about Character. Trust, fairness, responsibility, citizenship, and respect.

Elf cried and thanked them.

Elf feels great returning to Luang Prabang. He will investigate new teaching ops in the new year.

Funny seeing all the neurotic Europeans dazed and confused. They wander Disneyland. Lost and looking. DOING the Southeast Asian circuit. In-out. Bye bye.

Tourists find. Travelers discover.

Collected the Mystery 21-speed bike from the bus station. Had four months of grime and dirt sprayed off. Oiled. 

Spin them wheels. Excellent rolling elevations. Taking his time quickly. Expanding the adventure indeed. 

May all your adventures in 2012 be light and love. 

Sing

I found a temporary room at an expensive private suburban hospital. Clean sheets, a cot and three daily hots. It was an intensive care color spectrum zonal theory filled with young lovers in their emotional zombie reality of lies and uncertainty.

Downhill from the hospital a crying man waiting at the Metro station held a cardboard hospital chart and paper package. An orange paper folder discovered papers from a doctor, a lab, a prognosis, a definite definitive defining medical history. It revealed a story about someone dying, a wife, uncle, someone he loved.

He waited in heavy unconditional silence for a green Metro to collect him and his package of fear, loss and regret transporting him down the line. Home. Where he’d spill the contents on a table surrounded by friends and relatives sharing his tale. Loss and hypodermic needles of pain, pleasure, desire, sloth, envy and assorted fabulous conversations laughed.

A bird pressed itself against a thorn to make herself sing.

A stranger passing the hospital smelled wild roses. A bird sang. He whistled. Bird answered. 

The bird’s song were short sharp sounds, a trill, long deep vibrational throated mysteries, harmonic scales, warbling. 

“Now I know why the caged bird sings,” whispered an orphan child scrambling across mined fields next to her Cambodian bamboo home.

The man and bird carried on this musical conversation until the bird was satisfied the stranger knew the music. It flew, singing. 

trust

Once upon a time there was a private school in Laos.

A foreign teacher faced 12 seventh graders.

Week eleven.

How many of you trust yourself? he asked.

One girl raised her hand. With confidence.

11 mutes stared blank. Weak eleven.

Thank you for your attention.

Tomas Transtromer - Noble Prize Literature

The Half-Finished Heaven

Cowardice breaks off on its path.
Anguish breaks off on its path.
The vulture breaks off in its flight.
The eager light runs into the open,
even the ghosts take a drink.

And our paintings see the air,
red beasts of the ice-age studios.
Everything starts to look around.
We go out in the sun by hundreds.
Every person is a half-open door
leading to a room for everyone.
The endless field under us.
Water glitters between the trees.
The lake is a window into the earth.

The Tree and the Sky

There’s a tree walking around in the rain,
it rushes past us in the pouring grey.
It has an errand. It gathers life
out of the rain like a blackbird in an orchard.

When the rain stops so does the tree.
There it is, quiet on clear nights
waiting as we do for the moment.

The Couple

They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.

Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.

Tomas Transtromer