Good "Song": Alice's Restaurant Massacree

This unlikely 1967 Arlo Guthrie classic has become a Thanksgiving ritual for American radio stations, many of which spin it on that day. Some play it over and over for several hours, if not all day – though seldom or never on any other.

Yet everything about this track is anomalous. For starters, in a market that then insisted that all songs come in under three minutes – and remains uncomfortable with four to this day – this one tops 18. The whole A-side of its album!

It's also harshly critical of a particular American war, and conservatism in general, and despite what some would have you believe, that sort of thing has always been embargoed by American media. (Yes, even in the 60s.)

And finally, of course, it's not a song at all; more like a long monologue with a chorus at both ends. (This art form is called "talking blues": a sort of redneck rap that gained mainstream appreciation in the 30s when Arlo's dad, of whom some have heard, scored a hit of his own with one.)

In sum, it's a bit of a mystery how the Massacree met such wide success, or came to be so deeply associated with a quasi-religious holiday. Or that such a scathing assault on Cold War conventions still calls so many of the nation's angrily divided citizens to enjoy a good-natured laugh.

(And it's had that magic from the beginning. I played this recording in my high school history classes, to Reagan-era students who seized it with delight. There's just something about it. Discuss.)

One thing is clear: this gem of American pop culture is a true Thanksgiving blessing, given the genius of the writing and performance and the welcome relief of whimsy on such a solemn day. Guthrie's text and tone evoke the spirit of the era – and the rollicking ideals of its young. Realism and optimism; hope and resolve; humour and candour, all in equal measure.

I miss that. And them.

For the rest, this story Arlo tells in first person is fundamentally true, with allowance made for good storytelling. Alice really existed, she really had a restaurant, and it really wasn't called Alice's Restaurant. Arlo and a friend really were arrested for an environmental offence on Thanksgiving Day. They really did go to court. He really was later called up for the draught.

As for me, I don't know when I first heard it – early 70's, I'd guess; radio, no doubt – but it's been a favourite ever since. I loved Arlo's rural delivery, his youthful smartassery, his opposition to militarism and the Vietnam War, and his parody of military posturing. Above all I loved his trenchant wit.

All of which reinforced my own burgeoning career as a wiseacre. Now friends, there's only one or two things that the adults in my life might've done in response to this and the first was that they could have risen to their feet cheering, which wasn't very likely and I didn't expect it.

Anyway, here a half-century on, we're suddenly back in a place where singing a couple bars of Alice's Restaurant and walking out may be a duty we must all again perform. And two decades of Zen practice, with its tales of eccentric japes before the coercive glare of authority, have done little to spoil my taste for it.

So Happy Thanksgiving to my American brothers and sisters; peace and insight to all.

All Religious Morality

One lonely commandment:

If you don't like it, don't be it.


(Photo courtesy of Danh Đãnh and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Comrade spirit

(A point I've made before.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Brief Visual Meditation

Courtesy of a Zen droogie on social media.

WW: Old farmhouse

(This old house, near my childhood home, was once the residence of a family who owned and operated a dairy farm on the premises. The farm has long since become a housing estate, and the house effectively abandoned, for about 50 years now.

It's painful to see it slowly crumble, though slightly miraculous that it's still here at all, and entirely unchanged. It's like historical preservation, except the preservation has largely been inadvertant.

Any road, this is pretty much exactly the sort of house I've always wanted. [A more elaborate meditation on old farmhouses can be found here.])


Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Bashō's Frog

Matsuo Bashō (芭蕉) was a wandering Zen hermit of the Edo period, as well as an accomplished poet. Popularly considered the father of modern haiku, many of his verses are accepted as teaching in Zen circles today. The readily-memorised haiku format may drive some of this posterity, but there's no denying that Bashō's work often encodes palpable koanic insight.

Interestingly, his status as a self-trained free-range monk is rarely mentioned in our discussions of him, though we're happy to claim Bashō as the "Zen one" of Japan's Four Great Haikunists.

Thus do conservatives lay claim to the dissenters of yore.

Yet the eremitical nature of Bashō's practice is clearly evident in much of his work. Particularly his most famous poem, which is not merely lauded as Bashō's best, but in fact as the most awesomest haiku ever written, by anyone.

Feel up to it?

OK, clear your mind.

Ready?

the old pond
a frog jumps in
plop

That's it.

That's the poem.


Stuff to Notice

To begin with, this translation (Alan Watts, this time) is only one of dozens if not hundreds available; about which, more later. But I especially value Alan's take, emphasising as it does the humour that's central to Bashō's perspective.

Note also that while haiku – at least the classic kind – is supposed to contain references to nature, this one has nature coming out of its ears. I mean, there's no moonlight or cherry blossoms or summer rain or drifting snow. Nothing pretty, you dig. But nature? Yeah. It's got that in spades.

In his sardonic hermit way, Bashō seems to be saying, "I got yer nature, RIGHT HEAH!"

And then there's the Zen.

You may be thinking, "Big deal. Frog jumps in water. There's a noise. Nothing to see here."

And you may be right. I mean, you can get that kind of stuff anywhere, for cheap or free. Nothing unique is going on here. Nothing special.

Scared frog jumps in water, goes splash; not a headline you're likely to see in the Times.

Meanwhile, concentric circles are expanding in the water, lapping at the edges, returning through other circles approaching from behind. Frog resurfaces, climbs out. More circles. Wet frog drips, log gets wet, water runs off into pond.

The concentric circles expand and retract forever. The whole pond is implicated. And also its environs. And their environs. And all the environs beyond that.

And that's just one possible response. Maybe there's some suchness in there. Maybe some satori. Some admirers see all seven Zen principles of composition in these three banal lines.

Which is why they're sometimes called the most perfect haiku ever penned.

But not by its author, of course. We should also bear that in mind.


Language Matters

While we also remember language.

To start with, Bashō never wrote the poem reproduced above. And if by chance he had happened on it, none of that chicken scratch would have meant a thing to him. Because his text (per this source) was actually this:

古池や
蛙飛こむ
水の音

Which works out to:

furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

You don't need any Japanese to feel the visceral difference between this and literally anything it might have inspired in English. In fact, if you want to see just how thoroughly we anglophones can mess something up, check out the 32 translations catalogued here.

Robert Aitken's commentary on that page is also well worth the read, as is his stab at the source material:

The old pond has no walls;
a frog just jumps in;
do you say there is an echo?

And if you really want a plunge into the abyss, try Geoffrey Wilkinson, who starts with an acerbic comment on this whole frog thing, and then… well…

Go see for yourself. By the time Wilkinson's done he's taken you on a fascinating street tour of the haiku form and this one in particular, including several parodies by Japanese monks and poets over the past 500 years.

For example:

Old pond—
Bashō jumps in
the sound of water

– Zen master Sengai Gibon, 1750–1837.


Master Bashō,
at every plop
stops walking

– Anon, 18th century.


...while fellow hermit Ryōkan (1758–1831) had this to add:

The new pond—
not so much as the sound of
a frog jumping in


To say nothing of the fellow who wrote a limerick. (Yes, really.)

So if you're a fan of haiku, or hermits, or haiku-writing hermits, take a good surf into the lore of Bashō's frog. By the end of the evening you will have visited many corners of Zen, Japan, poetry, and history, and learned a great deal about the practice value of small bodies of water.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Warm autumn day

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.