The Diddley Bow is an Instrument

A friend of mine, a millennial, seeking, one presumes, a safe harbor, came to me with a matter of some plaintive concern to her. Without going into the details, except to say that it involved dating, fumble fingered ineptitudes and dissatisfaction, I have considered the matter and herewith the result.

Bringing to bear my multitudinous decade’s worth of observation and experience, and the cognizance that the experience so garnered is a result of lessons learned from bad judgment, this is what I have concluded; I offer it as a nostrum, a scheme, a remedy, for bringing about social reform and improvement and is offered for the benefit of those of us still involved in dating, efficiently fingered aptitudes, and the concomitant satisfactions.

In the pursuance of Love, Lust, and Happy Endings (LL&HE), we, the male gender, as a sub-species, are essentially single string instruments.  Not, perhaps, as limited in our capabilities as a Gopichand, described authoritatively as a one-string instrument plucked with one finger; to put it into the common parlance, a One-Trick Pony (O-TP). We are more like a Diddley Bow. I am reliably informed that the Diddley Bow, although also a single string instrument, consists of baling wire tensioned between two nails on a board over a glass bottle, that is used both as a bridge and as a means to magnify the instrument's sound; in short, young gentlemen, we are an O-TP, but, capable of nuance.

Our female partners in that LL&He pursuit are considerably more complicated. If I am to continue with the musical instrument analogy, and I feel so constrained, I’d describe Woman as a Guitar, a 6-string instrument with a multiplicity of frets requiring dexterous fingering to fully appreciate the tuning and tonal options on offer; more succinctly, a Fender Stratocaster Classic.

The problem, as I explained to my millennial complainant, is not in the awareness of the differences between women and men. That there is a difference in the way the genders respond to stimuli, of various kinds, enters the consciousness of us XY types fairly early in the process. The problem lies in the methods used in implementing those differences to a mutually satisfying conclusion.

As the goofy guy in the TV show Coupling reminded me, the advantage gay folks have is the familiarity and concomitant expertise, (born of many hours of pre-coupling solo practice), with the relevant instruments. Heterocoupling, to coin a phrase, requires expertise ab initio. Aside from the aforementioned 6 strings and the multiplicity of frets the abecedarian lover is faced with, there is the need to combine those into the trills, arpeggios, and strums rising to a climax to which all makers of good music aspire.

So, understand this you young aspirants to guitar godhood, while the notes playable on a guitar are, in order, E, A, D, G, B, E, they are not arranged in alphabetical order on the body nor are they, (the notes), exclusive to their assigned unfretted strings. [The sharp eyed will have noticed that the C and the F are conspicuous by their absence, the successful soundings of which require specific and considered fin...er, fretting. A further examination of the matter, in all its manifestations metaphorical and actual, is beyond the scope of this particular bit of Old Coot Advice (OCA) and may well be addressed at a later date.]

 To sum up, young Lothario, Diddley Bow nuances notwithstanding, it behooves you to learn, nay, master, the complexities of Woman and her POV of LL&HE. The strings, the plethora of frets, the strums, the trills, and the arpeggios with their appropriate fingerings have to be considered and utilized if music is to be made. It is important to remember that the happy ending is the coda, not the symphony.

p.s. Finding the spot where the G can be sounded and incorporated on all the six strings is an indispensable skill in making great music. And, good luck with that.

A photograph of a tiger with her young adolescent cubs doing the I-love-you-Ma-when-do-we-eat-full-body-leg-rub thing; evocative and all but the tag line, which included the words unbreakable bond, got me thinking.

First though, that unbreakable bond thing? Yeah, well, not so much. Maternal bonds, especially in the more predatory specie, tend to weaken, if not actually dissolve, as the cub matures; gender, mating rights, threat perception, hunting range and rights, sorts of issues help in that dissolution process. We humans, (and I use the term loosely given the amount of sapience we display in the stewardship of our lives), have sublimated those ‘animal’ tendencies according to our cultural norms. There is not, however, a parent(sane) alive who has not emitted a soul sigh of relief at the adulthood of an offspring and the ensuing easing of parental R word, responsibility; bond weakened, boom.

None of which is to detract from the photograph; nor the resonances with the I-miss-my-slightly-less-predatory-mom places in my soul. As a work of art, it did its job and touched me. The tag line, however, was a touch painting the lily and gilding gold-ish. Not, as the Seinfeld Krew might be tempted to say, that there is anything wrong with that. I also understand, I think, the need of the writer of that tag line to hug his/her mom and ask her if dinner was ready, expressed in the only means available. Hell, I might have done the same on a different day.

With an assurance of apologies for inadvertent offense and disrespect and having, one hopes, soothed the sensibilities of the author of the tag line - over statement, emotional need, wtf am I complaining about?

See, the overstatement of an emotional need, is, as even a cursory glance at the history of governance will show, a method of communication between, no, actually, from, the ruler to the ruled. It is, after all, an efficient way to recruit the great unwashed and unsophisticated into the  cannon fodder needed to man the front lines while the heavy thinking is happening in  ivory towers. Bonds cemented by emotion are not susceptible to reason. One of the reasons why Religion got into the business of governance and that, as we can all see, has worked out so well. Reason is a necessary component in the governance of a putative democracy.And when we, as more washed, although not necessarily more sophisticated, society accept that overstatement as the lingua franca, well, Trump, RSS, Daesh, Nazis, militant Buddhists(!) et.al, happen. Accepting florid displays of emotional need into the patterns of political, which is to say public, speech is handing the reins of democracy over to those who eschew the sense in the words unbreakable bonds in favour of the emotion triggered and generally leads to snarling, and lunging, and blood, and pain; a real possibility in the life cycle of the pictured trio.

NLP is a thing folks, like it or not.

Irritated& Shamed Indian

A question raised on Quora



What are the most irritating and shameful things in India?

I stand shamed when I'm reminded that the inclusive, open hearted philosophy of hinduism is institutionalized into the exclusionary rule ridden Religion of Hinduism replete with uniforms and hierarchies. That just ain't right.
I hang my head when a culture and philosophy that spawned Gandhi finds it so easy to justify killing in the name of Religion.
My skin crawls when a culture that Officially venerates Woman, finds it difficult to codify and control institutionalized violence against women. Do the khap panchayat rulings ring a bell? So very Talibanesque of them, no? But, please, don't tell 'em I said that. (see #2) And yes, Khap Panchayats are as much a religion, rituals, rules, repression, and all, as any of the other Official ones.
Shamed, I am, when jingoism and its fellow traveler racism is being woven into the fabric of the nation; when the Other is demonized and when politically necessary, reviled.
I cringe when I see unimaginable amounts of money are spent on monuments and temples to Mammon, while children go unfed, unclothed, uneducated, uncared for.
I get most irritated that India, YoMo'In (young modern India), aam admi, good (for a given value) people, accept this as the way things, in all their lal-bathied, self promoting VVIP (uppercase by decree)ways are. I shouldn't have said most, 'cuz, I get even more irritated that you, YoMo'In, with your abysmal voting percentages, allow this to happen.
Oh, and the incessant honking is maddening.

Kids and the Things They Teach

While thinking about the things I have learned from my daughter, I overheard a friend refer to TV as an idiot box and I was reminded of why I disagree.

FLASHBACK/1983

I’m wandering through the den, on my way to my office, my head desperately looking for something that can be sustained through more than a sentence or two of wordsmithing.

So far, a walk in the garden and its determined experiencing of the glories of nature, to include an attempt to understand animal behaviour in the persons of Idli and Chutney, Great Dane and Rhodesian ridgeback, respectively, has proved, you should pardon the expression, fruitless. Both the dogs were unequivocal in their averment that wandering aimlessly through SoCal semi-desert scrubland on a hot summer morning was not on their agenda. I had left them to their somnolent arrogance under the porch and went to find my wife. Now, you’d think that a woman who has said, sometimes publicly and none too quietly, that she knows me better than I do myself, you’d think she’d be able to tell me what I could write about on a given morning, wouldn’t you? I’d say fruitless here as well, but I can’t, ‘cuz, y’know, the kid and all... Anyway, she had, in no uncertain terms, sent me from her side, unaided; hence my journey through the den; which contains, among other things, my daughter, inelegantly sprawled across the couch facing the television.

I grump my way to the couch and dad-bully her into making room for me. She grumps right back and does so.

The television is awash with the emotions of a group of impossibly beautiful young people wrestling, hair and makeup intact, with some sort of seemingly intractable issue that necessitates much emoting. My grump had found a place to roost.

After a desultory, naam ke vaaste, attempt to make sense of the happenings on the screen, my grump morphed into the parental whine of idiot boxes and their time wasting ill effects, culminating in asking her why she was not, instead, reading a book and thus improving her mind and putting time to good use.

Her universally understood time-out gesture put a stop to the whine.

“Is a picture worth a thousand words? she asks.

“Give or take” I respond.

“Then how many words am I reading in a 30 minute program?” she asks, a touch too triumphantly.

We then go on to discuss the relative merits of what is available on TV and in print. My insistence that all that is available on TV is unwatchable, unworthy, junk, is somewhat deflated by my admission that there is only a small proportion of all that is available in a bookstore that I deem worthy of my time and attention

My balloon gets punctured when she wordlessly hands me the remote control.

FLASH FORWARD/ today

The very pleasant memory of my daughter snuggled up next to me as we watched a National Geographic Special on the doings of a small, rare, and important fish that lives in the Red Sea and her Master’s degree in Marine Biology.

Saffron Rock

There’s an oily sort of feeling to the politics of India today. There is a nausea inducing sort of slipperiness masquerading as the process of governance. Faith and religion’s imperatives are working their way into the oh-so-fragile skin of reason that is attempting to hold this billion plus collection of ego and emotion together.

And, it all feels so familiar. There is déjà vu happening all up in here. It’s like I’m hearing Carl ‘Retro’ Rove and his Christian Crew tuning up to play a gig in India; Christian Rock morphed into Saffron Rock (lyrics by RSS). Thrash music that assaults and overpowers the sense of the listener; rhyme and reason battered into submission by the screaming chorus of Because My God Says So.

Not that I’m accusing the Hindu Right of plagiarism, not at all, I hasten to add, as quickly as possible. I just think that the brains trust of India’s new Governors saw something that worked and by adding the much richer masala that is this ancient culture, made it their own.

Take this business of Ancient Culture as a simple solution to the trials and issues of a not at all ancient, far from simple, social organism. Do this. Don’t do that - Edicts of a simpler time as the way to manage the mad mélange of self-interest that is this modern construct, India. Any suggestion that those Ancient Rules of Behavior might not be an exact, or even comfortable, fit on the modern body politic is dismissed as the work of the devil, quite often, the foreign devil. Any argument that Ancient Writings, Vedas, Commandments, what have you, are guidelines and not, as it were, carved in stone, is howled down as anti-national and disloyal, treasonous, Christian America and Hindu India. Culture elevated to the status of Religion. It wasn’t that good a song when Ronnie and the Republicans were doing their thing; it hasn’t gotten any better by adding masala to it. But for some reason, or the lack thereof, Ronnie and the Reps were able to spawn a faith based form of governance that produced George W. Bush and the Democracy Destroyers. It took a while, but Carl and Crew got there. I don’t think it is going to take that long in India. After all India is doing in 60 years what took the USA 200 years to do.

I guess I’m hoping that India’s lean and hungry youth will do better than the fat and happy US electorate. Maybe India’s youthful intelligence will recognize the dangers of isolate purity and vote for the exhilaration of diversity. Festivals are best when new meets old and dances in the melodies so created.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

There is the ignoble part of me that envies the youth in India. More particularly the youth in Bengalooru. They are living in a world that I thought Iwould never see again and they are living it brimming with the youthful energies that I once had. In the words of the song, it smells like teen spirit all up in here.
A heady scent, that. It is one that I and my generation, encountered, experienced, infused into ourselves, better than half a century ago. And in so doing changed the course of human social history. I believe for the better. The Youth of B’loor (Yo...) – no wait, that’s an unfortunate acronym – Youth in B’loor (YiB), stand on the threshold of doing the same.
There is that dusky undertone of Travel, Adventure, New Experiences, and Unpredictable Delights that happen when strangers start living next door to each other. In B’loor that happens because of all the cities in India, B’loor ranks among the newer ones. India’s older cities, the large ancient ones, grew over the centuries. With their various sectarian and ethnic agglutinations domiciled in enclaves of sameness, those older cities perpetuated, and still do (to one degree or another), the mildly xenophobic attitudes of the rural and traditional backgrounds of the denizens. B’loor, on the other hand, exploded into city-dom. Young Information Technology worker bees swarmed B’loor from all parts of India, bringing with them bits and pieces of their ‘native’. Without Mom, Dad, and the parivar looking over their shoulders these youngsters, Youngistan, to give them their generational label started mingling. The huge advantage to mingling is that in its Brownian motion it knocks of those edges that don’t fit, leaving a well rounded organism that merges into the larger whole of Modern India, or MoIn, as I prefer. (Get it? I did, it is a close relative of a pun). Next thing you know, and to quote Bobby Darin, you’ve got 2 butterflies, casting their eyes, both in the same direction with the resulting butterfly collection. That’s what happens when you’ve got young singles living in close proximity to each other. In MoIn, in B’loor, it is getting increasingly difficult for the ‘native’ to be identified by physical feature. Ask the children of the YiBs for their ‘native’ and you’ll get as confusing an answer as you would from any USian of my generation.
“Let’s see now. We started out in Syracuse, and then moved to McHenry, but I went to school in Iowa, California, Montana, New York, spending considerable amount of time in Amsterdam and Haight Ashbury.”
Except, of course, the names will be Indian. The music, the laughter, the love, the heady scent of The Possible, will have a B’loor accent.
World peace may not be that far away.