This blog is not about music, though I do have a crazy, quasi-spiritual connection to music and reserve the right to write about that on occasion. I have for a long time wrestled with writing something about my favorite playlist, an ever-evolving, wildly varied collection of songs titled Spirituals. But, alas, I haven’t found the way into that piece yet and I’m no good at forcing open the doors of creativity. So, no, this blog is not about music.
Nor are the ideas expressed herein necessarily melodious. I wouldn’t describe my writing as particularly mindful or relaxing, the sort of thing you dip into before bed to improve your sleep duration or quality. I’m no L. M. Montgomery. Although I frequently find myself swimming in the waters of childhood nostalgia, sometimes those waters can be choppy.
This blog is simply named after a line in one of my favorite sections of one of my favorite poems, Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road.” Here’s the bit with the melodious thoughts, it’s from section 7:
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always drop fruit as I pass) [1]:
I have a long, rich history with Mr. Whitman. In the spring of 1990, I transferred as an English major from MJC to CSU, Stanislaus. I enrolled in a beginning acting course and three literature courses, including a section of Paul Reuben’s Major American Authors. On the very first day of class, Reuben assigned a research paper on an American author as our culminating class project. We were to work on this paper all semester and were expected to engage in considerable research beyond our textbook and class notes. There was a list of authors to choose from, and Reuben encouraged us to sign up early because it was strictly a one-author-per-student situation. He waved the list in front of us enticingly. After class students crowded around the list, which, in 1990, was an actual paper document Reuben had spread out on his podium.
By the time I fought my way to the podium the only author I had any real experience with – William Faulkner – was already claimed. I scanned through the list several times, but I was at a loss. My imposter syndrome flared: what kind of English major was I? Who were these authors? At MJC I had taken both my beginning and advanced composition courses from the same professor, Henry Hahn. Mr. Hahn had an abiding love for what I like to call “place-based, savage American pastoralism.” Don’t bother looking this up; I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who calls it that. Whatever the official genre is called, for two consecutive semesters I had immersed myself in the writings of Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, and Robinson Jeffers. None of their names were on Reuben’s list. Feeling desperate, I put my name next to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Wasn’t he sort of a non-conformist? And didn’t he write a book titled Nature? Maybe he would have some cool Edward Abbey vibes?
As it turns out, I am not an Emerson fan. Reading him was like pulling teeth for me. Reading about him was easier, and generally I felt his ideas were cool. But getting to those ideas? Reading Emerson for me is like listening to jazz: I understand why it’s good, I just don’t enjoy it. It’s too heady. I enjoy art more when I experience it through the gut or – even better – through the loins. Can we just leave my sad little underdeveloped intellect out of it, please?
In John Jay Chapman’s 1899 essay, “Emerson,” which I dutifully read as part of my research, these words struck a chord with me:
“Human sentiment was known to Emerson mainly in the form of pain. His nature shunned it; he cast it off as quickly as possible.”[2]
If you know me, I am basically a walking mass of human sentiment. I credit Chapman for making me finally admit I had made the worst possible choice for my research topic. I actually dredge up this experience as an example when, as an academic research librarian, I’m invited to colleagues’ classrooms to talk about the importance of well-reasoned topic selection. As in: don’t choose blindly; don’t let what happened to me happen to you.
My love affair with Whitman might have been a reaction to Emerson. It’s not the first time I’ve overcorrected when it comes to men. It might also be related to me starting to fall for my first husband, who was not only enrolled in that American Authors class with me, but a regular fixture in the theater department where I went three days a week for my acting class. All I know is I was innocently sitting in class one day when Professor Reuben decided to read to us the opening pages of “Song of Myself.” I’m including a selection of those lines here, though I don’t really expect you to read them all. But if you ARE so inclined, I wildly encourage you to read them aloud.
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.
The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is
odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.
The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood
and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d
sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,
The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and
meeting the sun.
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it? The smoke of my own breath, echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine? Seriously? This is not jazz. This is not the shunning of human sentiment. This IS human sentiment. All the humans. All the sentiment. Even read aloud by my middle-aged, paunchy professor in his thick Indian accent, Whitman, to me, was sex, drugs, and rock and roll all rolled up into one perfect package. I actually cried. I felt released to feel after being all boxed up by Emerson.
After class I requested to change authors for the final project. Reuben didn’t want to let me do it, as half the semester had passed and he worried I wouldn’t have time to change lanes so suddenly. But my adamance, my streaked mascara, my argument that my grounding in transcendentalism would transition me smoothly from the arms of Ralph to Walt finally worked. And the rest, as they say, is history.
By the way, John Jay Chapman wrote an essay on Walt Whitman, too. I think Chapman and I see eye-to-eye on the mind-gut-loin continuum. Chapman says of Whitman,
His mind seems to be submerged and to have become almost a part of his body. The utter lack of concentration which resulted from living his whole life in the open air has left him spontaneous and unaccountable.[4]
I don’t know about you, but being spontaneous and unaccountable sounds – as our kids used to say, “goals as fuck.” And speaking of goals, Chapman concludes his essay on Whitman with this verdict:
He was neither chaste, nor industrious, nor religious. He patiently lived upon cold pie and tramped the earth in triumph.[5]
A few months back I cued up an audio version of “Song of the Open Road.” It was right around the time I was trying to figure out what to call my blog, and I wanted to hear the poem again. Not just read it, but hear it. Russell and I listened to it in its entirety as we drove out of the harbor that morning, and by the time we arrived at the onramp, we were both quietly sobbing. Turns out Whitman takes on a whole new significance when you’ve been traveling down the open road for a few decades.
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call'd riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an irresistible call to depart. [6]
So what is this blog about? It’s about so many things: thrift stores and libraries, reading books and poems, watching movies and plays, listening to music and podcasts, loving pets and loving people. It’s about the past, the future, and the here and now. It’s about the places I go as I tramp the earth in triumph and the rough new prizes I’m finding in middle age. It’s about all the large, small, profound, mundane, and, yes, occasionally melodious thoughts that descend when I’m walking under the oak canopy with Otis. So pull up a seat. And watch out for falling fruit.
[1] Whitman, Walt. “Song of the Open Road.” This poem is in the public domain and available all over the internet. I used the version on the Whitman Archive: https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00707_00790
[2] Chapman, John Jay. “Emerson,” from Emerson and Other Essays (1899). Available in full at Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/13088/pg13088-images.html
[3] Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself.”
[4] Chapman, John Jay. “Emerson,” from Emerson and Other Essays (1899).
[5] ibid
[6] Whitman, Walt. “Song of the Open Road.” This poem is in the public domain and available all over the internet. I used the version on the Whitman Archive: https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00707_00790
