moon traveller herald

To make a good movie requires some simplification, I suppose. If it is the kind of simplification that distills things to the essential - it improves on what is real but possible to overlook; so I won’t quibble with the fact that Phil Chess never exists in “Cadillac Records.” But other quibbling will this way come. The movie tells a good story and gets at many of the critical elements of the blues in Chicago in America in the 1950s, which is certainly worthy of motion picture treatment. So understand that. But see that it does so without dealing with the fact that Chess was run by the Chess brothers. The film says ‘so long’ to Phil Chess and focuses on Leonard Chess, who by most accounts was in fact the determined driving force behind Chess Records, the fabled label of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Etta James and many others. Ok. Need to go further. Adrien Brody gets the role of Leonard – he plays it well but brings more hair to the role than a literal take on Leonard would call for. Leo...

The Dalai Lama spent a few days in Boston, and Cecelia and I were able to go to see him in Foxboro at Gillette Stadium, home of the New England Patriots. Thought I would try and herald his Holiness’s message. Call us the Modern Day Quicksilver Messenger Service. You should, he said: “Keep a warm heart – and a calm mind.” That is the basics. Yes, pretty basic. But you got to go back to basics, right? Sometimes. When you are a hitter in a slump. Or a golfer turning duffer. “Keep a warm heart – and a calm mind.” Remember the kindness of your mother. He went on. The kindness of a mother is nurturing – it instills inner values. He remembers his own mother as very patient and kind. He rode on her shoulders until he was three, and he would pull on one or the other of her ears to tell her the direction he wanted to go. He laughed remembering this spate of youthful cruelty – he laughed many times in a disarming an infectious way. We could not see the Dalai Lama especially well. We were no clos...

This is a failure. I think with blogs that wasn’t ever meant to be much of an issue..as a result, we have oceans of gunk in our information bitstream! Mea culpado! I was always impressed by Mahalia’s “Move on up A Little Higher” – the words are amazing, I’ve heard a couple of versions. But the enchantment is mostly about her singing of this song. But, like, say, the Staples’ “Last Month of the Year,” it got into my blood. “I’m going to move on up a little higher. Feast with the Prophet Daniel. I’m going to move on up a little higher. Meet my loving mother.” “I’m going to move on up a little higher. Feast of the Rose of Sharon. I’m going to move on up a little higher. And it will be always ‘howdy-howdy’ .. and never good by.” The description by the poet is of a leaving. Dying. But seen not in the sense of internment. But seen instead in terms of advancement. This is one essence of Black American vision that resonates most especially for me: There has got to be a better world anywhere. S...