Essay by Su Zi: Citizens’ Alert

Many of us have already survived the rising tides of climate catastrophe. Current predictions do not include a return to paradise, and, in fact, are fair warning of future fiascos. Perhaps, it might be wise to consider that which has been written about such events to enhance, at least, personal preparedness.

Published accounts vary widely; however, a memoir of a storm by Riza Oledan-Ramos/ Walt FJ Gooding called Drinking Seawater, which was acquired at a bookfair, contains a scene of evacuation:

This wasn’t your typical storm. This was something entirely different—something of a completely different nature than I or anyone else had ever experienced. It was as if it were alive. It sounded and felt as if it were a living thing—a conscious, breathing, thinking being with an intention, and on a mission. It was trying to get to us. First it tried the front door, then it tried the side walls; then the windows, finally the roof [...] it pounded and howled and screamed at the roof[...]the howling never stopped. It pounded and shook and finally it got its way. It tore our roof off and flung it into the night as it raced inside after us (12)

The arc of the narrative is that of aftermath, personal and specific enough to include both photographs and a survival checklist.

There are professional published accounts as well, and now, although time has passed, the possibility of Gulf storms has not. While myths about storms not coming ashore was disproven by Asheville, North Carolina, aftermath can take a generation for some healing. It has been a generation, now, since the storm that directly hit New Orleans, but mention of the storm among locals is a demarcation in time. Professional accounts of Katrina include that of New Orleans journalist Chris Rose 1 dead in attic (2005), also a memoir. In this case, the protagonist returns to see what is left and return to work. 

And I’m telling you: it’s hard

It’s hard not to get crispy around the edges. It’s hard not to cry. It’s hard not to be very, very afraid.

[...]

We have a generator and water and military food rations and Doritos and smokes and booze. [...] Some of these guys lost their houses -- everything in them 

[...] 

And they stink. We all stink. We stink together (22)

Rose also makes mention of celebrity journalists, “The satellite trucks stretch for eight blocks on Canal Street. [...] I saw Anderson Cooper interviewing Dr Phil, Dr Phil’s camera crew filmed Cooper, and about five or six other camera crews [...] filmed all of that “(26).

Anderson Cooper included a chapter about Katrina in Dispatches from the Edge (Harper Collins 2006), along with accounts of Tsunami, Iraq and Niger. That an American city would be in the same celebrity catastrophe accounting ought to serve as warning as well. Cooper begins his account by counting corpses:

[...]the searchers find a body lying on a sidewalk in an empty-cul-de-sac.I think it’s a woman; at first, it’s hard to tell.  Water wipes away identity, race, even gender. I think she’s African American, but her skin appears white, translucent almost.

Someone has covered her face and part of her body with a dirty bedspread. Her feet and hands stick out.

[...]

The team takes pictures—Click, Click—then records the woman’s GPS coordinates

[...]

I never thought I’d see this here, in America—the dead left out like trash. None of us speaks. (138)

Cooper’s narrative is interspersed with personal recollections of the city, as he tells us of individual moments of aftermath. Yet, lest someone take sole hope in evacuation centers, Cooper interviews Dr Greg Henderson, who arrived at the evacuation point, “discovered that there was no medical team there, just evacuees. Thousands of them.” (161). Cooper describes the interview site as “standing on a garbage-strewn street outside the Convention Center one week after the storm” where Dr Henderson says, “This is where hell opened its mouth” (160). As for the evacuation point itself:

They were packed in everywhere, all the way into to the street, and pretty much the other side of the street; it was just one mass of humanity. No air-conditioning, just people crying and dying. Crying and dying (161)

Cooper witnessed the Katrina aftermath for a few weeks. He makes a remark that ought to be useful for us in preparation, as he asked officials questions: “Demanding accountability is no game, and there’s nothing wrong with trying to understand who made mistakes, who failed. If no one is held accountable for their decisions their actions, all of this will happen again” (191).

These three accounts of once-rare, now frighteningly possible, super storms, must give sane people pause, especially as the northern American continent is already beleaguered with drought, fires and heat in the wake of some devastating arctic storms. Whether or not we want to consider the weather might be keystone to community, if not personal, survival. Perhaps we ought to take some consideration time while we still have it.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

               

Check out her author page on Amazon.

Essay by Su Zi: Voluntary Service

 

Voluntary Service

There is a place we sleep, and often we call that place home.

The physical area around our home is our community; although we also can have communities of interest that are not as tied to walking distance, that can be just as foundational to our lives as a safe place to sleep.

Just as the quality of our sleep-nest affects us, so do the qualities of our communities; however, just as there are ways we can make more pleasant our homes, there are also ways we can make our communities more pleasant as well, by the occasional lending of a hand.

Ecological disasters do bring forth any neighbor who is adept with a chainsaw, but we need not wait to meet the neighbors until the fourth day of no power.

Yes, everyone is beleaguered with worries, and there are some people who are stymied, who might circle and snort or yowl and cause tonal chaos, or worse; however, humanity has virtues, and to this, we seek solace.

In the memory of our deepest comforts, there is pleasure. Perhaps we kept that pleasure alive through hobby. Perhaps we read up on it some. Perhaps we attended events and were immersed in a group of other people who too are there to enjoy.  We gain energization, and we carry that into our next days, sharing that happiness: we had a good time.

The adage to do what you love requires economic commitment, but

what if it was just the time of day

a day

given

It might be that you arise in the dark and first light finds you at a local park, perhaps. You cannot help but see the first of the day’s rays greet the trees, and you get to stand there a minute, however long you can hold still and watch the glow. Of course, there’s the event office, and whatever you have signed up to do, whatever equipment the event coordinator is required to provide for the day’s use: a clipboard, maybe. Every event held outside relies on volunteers, and the list of local events is not difficult to locate—festivals and exhibitions, sporting events and inter-species events such as dog trials, agricultural festivals and horse shows.

I have been a volunteer since the 20^th century, since childhood when mamma allowed me to work a shift at Barb Sielaff’s recycling center. It is what one does.

 For the past few decades, I have given of myself to those magnificent, much beleaguered beasts that city folk call horsie stuff. Over time, I have become increasingly fascinated with the influence of horses on humanity, on the best of ourselves, our humanity. We shared our lives with horses—as many of us continue to do with dogs and cats and birds and aquatics. And yes, it’s true that I, too, have been down the centerline—there are trophies and ribbons and photos and certificates—but the joy of it is more than recorded service to the sport.

It might be that

On a February morning that has been now a February morning for well-nigh thirty years, you again pass through well-known gates and great your hostess, now an acquaintance after all this time, all these shared years here.

It might be that

There is, in the glowing morning, a one hundred- and fifty-year-old run about, made of trees that no longer exist, and stunningly slender and elegant of line, the original wood a soft patina in the last of dawn.    

It might be that

You take your hat and drive through the dark, and whoever is there at the gate, you still take your spot under a certain tree. Maybe there are tents and golf carts, plastic tables and urns of coffee, a t shirt with the event logo. The layout always puts the arena on a prepared hill, carefully constructed for level footing, There are international flags, there are international languages; best of all, there are horses: a Shetland and Chincoteague and a Fjord pony, Morgans and not only the big Dutch harness horses, but teams of them—a song in percussion of hooves and earth.

It might be that

You see someone you know, have known. That the years were or were not kind matters not because here you are now, seeing them, bumping shoulders, How the hell are ya?, your hats allowing a moment’s glimpse into each other’s eye; yes, we are still here

It might be that

Here comes someone you know, early for the in-gate, circling the trees in figure eights. You remember a moment decades ago, maybe before the almost gown son on the back of the carriage was out of swaddle, and you speak a sly joke, maybe and there’s a smile. Yes, we are still here, we have seen some things, and how wonderful to see you now.

And thus, go forth: lend a hand to that which is joy, which flowers from your open heart.

    Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago. Check out her author page on Amazon.

The Last Tattoo by Su Zi

 

The Last Tattoo

It might be that some of us have scars—surgical or experiential—as souvenirs of where we have been. Certainly, as children, some of us might have been privy to those intimate histories of where the scar was born, how it came into existence, how we grow around it if we are lucky enough to become old trees.

It also might be that some of us have tattoos—one or many, faded or still fresh—and these too ride shotgun to every moment ever after. For those you have considered, but yet to have encountered the tattoo experience: it is intimate. For those with a few tattoos, we know of what sense of resonance we must have with the totem to choose it.

And also, it might be that there are a few tattoo collectors—people who have many tattoos. Sometimes we might see a sleeve—an entire arm—in a swirl of markings, some intricate, some boldly graphic, a personal totem of the body.

I have many tattoos. Some of them I can only see with multiple mirrors, or in photographs. There are some in places few people will see ever, although there are photographs. As a tattooed person, you will be photographed—first by the artist who takes a picture for their portfolio, which is only of your fresh tattoo prior to bandaging. It might be that you attend events specifically for tattooing, and these have a history unto themselves, as all ritual events do. At one point, there was a convention of women tattoo artists only: Marked for Life. At such conventions, there are photographers. Some of the photographers exhibit through galleries and publication. I am told that I, as a tattooed person—in addition to specific tattoos—have appeared, perpetual apparition, me—in Italy, a place I shall never see.

Eventually, it might be that some of us grow into health issues. It might be that a surgeon scars a tattoo, or that life scars a tattoo. When we wear a tattoo for years and years, it is no longer a totem on our skin, it is our skin. While archeologists have found tattooed bones, our eventual future, we are still in our skins.

But, it might be that the rigors of that intimate ritual are eventually beyond us—perhaps there is only skin on bone now.

No more new tattoos.

And so, what of what is now the last one—

For me, it is a shared tattoo with someone no longer in my life

For me, it is a mark made in grief for a life lost

It is a standard flash broken heart that can only be seen if I am warm enough to wear short sleeves. We were walk-ins right before closing, in pre-plague times when every shop had to smell of green soap. The tattoo is on my forearm, right between the elbow and the crook with visible blue veins. I cannot remember the name of the artist. The shop is now closed.

But the tattoo rides with me in everything I do—because the grief it totemized rides with me in everything I do. People might see it riding my arm between Kimo’s forearm rose and the upper sleeve done long ago by Patty Kelley; there’s rich history in all the arts, and this includes tattoos and their artists. 

And while there are many opportunities for remembrance in our ordinary days, some ritual holidays might echo deeper for our own personal ghosts. We all honor our own histories in our own ways; for some of us, we wear them as well.

Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.

                     

Check out her author page on Amazon.

Live Review of ABBA by Andrew Darlington

 Ensorcelled by the September 1955 mystical vinyl codex ‘a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-lop-bam-boom’ at age eight, Andrew Darlington embarked on a lifetime quest to decipher the magical incantation’s profundity, traipsing in not entirely straight lines of zigzag wandering across decades of enchantment, yet is still no closer to the true enlightenment revelation must bring. As of now, the seeking continues across a proliferation of platforms, including EIGHT MILES HIGHER .

‘THERE WAS SOMETHING 

IN THE AIR THAT NIGHT…’

Live Review Of:

ABBA: VOYAGE

at the ABBA Arena, 

Pudding Mill Lane, London E15

Wham! is playing in the toilets, which seems to be not actually catching the spirit of the event.

But there’s birdsong in the Swedish snowfall forest as the audience file in. And a glowing figure half-glimpsed moving between the tree’s relentless verticals… a girl? A stag?... someone suggests an ostrich!

Back in 1976 we were drunk on fighting the Punk wars, as intense and as ground-zero serious as breathing, as sharp as a Stanley-knife cut. ABBA were the despised mainstream Radio Two fluff, they were Mom & Dad fodder. Later, when style-bible NME was defining the ‘perfect Pop’ of ABC or Haircut 100 they neglect to mention that ABBA have already been juggling those equations for quite some time. Except they have global hits too.

Kraftwerk, with immaculate credibility, had nudged transhumanism through robotics and cyber-extensions, but here in the ABBA Arena, they’ve gone way beyond that. While the real group members are somewhere back in Sweden listening to the sweet sound of profits piling up, their avatars – ABBAtars, are performing to a full house – the audience that Benny calls ‘the fifth part of ABBA’, the dance-zone crammed too tight to gyrate little more than a sway and wave their arms. Some dressed in Xmas-tree suits of glitterlights.

This is Bjorn Again, recreated just as they were in 1979, through the good graces of Industrial Light & Magic. Playing sold-out concerts in this purpose-built arena since 27 May 2022. Opening with ‘The Visitors’, title-track of from their 1981 eighth studio album, which also turned out to be their final album of the twentieth century

‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’ stays intact despite the Madonna sample, and the gender-bending TV sit-com.

‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ rises above Alan Partridge, and touchingly, despite the pain and bitterness of divorce and separation, their images are embracing here.

You wonder what you’re actually applauding. They’re not here! You applaud the memories, the spectacle… and there is a ten-piece live band to add authenticity, the band who do ‘Does Your Mother Know’ without ABBA’s participation, with Cleopatra Rey, Carlene Graham and Kara-Ami McCreanor sharing vocals.

There are two numbers from the 2021 Voyage come-back studio album, ‘Don’t Shut Me Down’ and ‘I Still Have Faith In You’, in which they became their own tribute band, bookended by the ‘Rora’ video animation that Anime’s Roger Dean’s cosmic Tolkienesque choreography between ‘Eagle’ and ‘Voulez-Vous’, which solidifies into four godlike ABBA statue-faces. While each ABBA member steps out to deliver a humanising to-camera solo conversational interlude. Even though, of course, they’re not really here.

‘Chiquitita’ features a slow eclipse effect behind the four group-images, and Anni-Frid sings against the galactic swirl of stars for ‘Fernando’. They wear their piped Avatar motion-capture suits for ‘Lay All Your Love For Me’ which segues into ‘Summer Night City’. ‘Waterloo’ uses genuine old video clips, with Benny pointing out that the UK Eurovision judges awarded it nul-points! And the audience erupts for the clumsily-phrased ‘Dancing Queen’ which became the group’s only American no.1 hit. You can’t go wrong with a Dance-track in the USA.

As someone points out, if Benny & Bjorn had been called Sid & Dick, the group would have been called ASDA.

The apparent lyrical naivety of ‘Thank You For The Music’ – ‘I’ve often wondered, how did it all start? who found out that nothing can capture a heart like a melody can?’ is rescued by the throwaway quip ‘well, whoever it was, I’m a fan.’ Featured on their fifth studio The Album and the flawed 1977 ABBA: The Movie, there are now suspected traces of AI fabrication in Agnetha’s facial close-ups. Or maybe I’m being too scrupulous? We all had a secret crush on the blonde one from ABBA, even during the Punk wars! While if the pain of divorce lies behind ‘The Winner Takes It All’ – saved as the encore, it might just take their lyrics, ‘the gods may throw a dice, their minds as cold as ice, and someone way down here, loses someone dear’ into a kind of universality. Yes, that surely touches even the coldest hearts.

The four group members appear as they are today in a final cameo, although you suspect there’s been a little digital massaging even here. As Bjorn points out, it’s a time-travelling Tardis event, pleasingly mangling credibility and temporal continuity into a nonsense.

Comfort Music (Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy”): Essay by Su Zi

GAS: Poetry, Art and Music welcomes Su Zi as a monthly columnist!

Zoeglossia Fellow 2023

Poet-writer, artist, equestrian

Creates Red Mare, an eco-feminist, poetry chapbook series that is handmade (each cover is a numbered block print, each copy is bound by hand sewing, editions limited to under 50, publishes at summer and winter solstice).

Publications in zines as well as full titles in poetry, essay, art – Multiple contributions to Unlikely Stories, automachination, GAS.

Titles from various publishers include: Danke, Flux , Chirp, Sister Woman, Solstice Epistles, Three Days, Chicago Poems, Pillar of Salt, Lit, The Tissue of Language , Building Community, Transgression in Motion,Tropical Depression, #100TPC

 Comfort Music (Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy”)

In the social unsettlements of spring, we might find ourselves spiritually beleaguered. For those for whom the old ways of community interaction are no longer viable, there’s respite in archival music. While current times see archives themselves as being under a bit of a barbaric threat, it’s our history—the embers we pass forward as our legacy. 

If we consider the span of time for a generation to be around the half-century mark, we may find the influences of our forebearers upon our current culture. In the case of music, many automated playlists will routinely include music composed at a different time. Of all the arts, music has become the most accessible form, for while it might be some privilege or risk to attend live music performances, recorded music allows for a timeless and global experience.

In the case of plundered libraries, archival activism exists to ensure preservation and often these are curated from private collections; in music, these collections might include the holdings of a broadcast company, or someone’s private collection, and a variety of swap meets. Of course, there’s the accessibility of cyber download, from songs to the entirety of an artist’s work, and for the reason of accessibility, let us consider a widely disseminated work as viable for general social solace.

A half century ago, a single musical work that was widely disseminated was a hit, a cultural moment; as our culture has staggered into our current era, how hot is that once hit tune? While the complete works of this artist are indubitably influential, for our needs for solace, allow a listen to Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy, Mercy”, which has an Apple AI falsely cheerful introduction that includes “the revelation is that political music [...] can be inviting” and an odd reference to hippies.

A cautionary note for this-century listeners: this is analog music. There’s an orchestra playing every line of sounds on this recording—the credits list some twenty-five musicians, including two groups for additional vocals, and two people playing violin. The production team—those who published this work a half a century ago, number just under a dozen. This vintage work, an auditory composition of just over three minutes—a work of art with minimal physical existence—was the collaborative effort of dozens of people.

The piece itself begins with multiple instruments, including a piano, playing a chord twice, followed by two chords a half step higher on the scale, and then the initial vocals, which begin with the song’s chorus, it’s thesis “things ain’t what they used to be”, the repeated refrain occurring four times in the song’s three minutes. Gaye sings the single, seven syllables within the four beat bars as ditrochaic, emphasizing the “Things/What/Used /Be” and sometimes using a more trochee rhythm to stretch his tenor on the vocals for the following line. The song’s lyrics are two-line stanzas that may or may not employ end rhyme or consistent meter; instead, they read like koans, although they are structured as three citations of evidence with a fourth being conclusionary. This conclusionary stanza poses the still unanswered rhetorical question:

“What about this overcrowded land? /How much more abuse from man can she stand?”

Gaye sings the multiple syllable word as a ditrochee, speeding up his enunciation in a manner that was (and still is) a demonstration of technical ability, but which both matches the timing of the song’s general tempo. 

In counterpoint to Gaye’s smooth vocals is a saxophone solo that comes at about a minute, and after the lyrics conclude with a five-line supplication that is a change from the four, two-line lyric stanzas that support the song’s thesis.  The saxophone plays for six bars that climax with the blues squeal famous from that instrument.  It is here that the tempo’s emphasis on the third stress is most audible, and listeners often find this opportune for dancing—for interaction with the work. The final minute of the piece engages additional vocals for six bars, and a kind of denouement of instruments, a soprano voice.

Despite the remove of time, Gaye’s lyrics are unfortunately relevant still, and, in certain lights, the use of the pronoun “she” to reference the planet might still be controversial. Indeed, the song itself might be seen as controversial, since the thesis is one that asks for compassion for our obviously distraught planet. Nonetheless, the song’s elegant orchestration, still-relevant thesis, and Gaye’s sensitive tenor are still a rich offering of musical food for our soul.