The raspy blues of the inimitable Joe Cocker

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There are voices in the world of rock n’ roll as quickly recognizable as one of those classic guitar riffs which peal off a Jimi Hendrix or an Eric Clapton Fender Stratocaster. Even from the first syllables we know Aretha Franklin, or Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, or Jim Morrison. It is a stellar list and a passionately contested one.[1] What is certain somewhere on this list we find the inimitable Joe Cocker, he of the spasmodic movement and of “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” fame.[2] Yet he still remains underappreciated. Perhaps he is too often typeset into those images of the young and wild rocker from the 70’s who made his iconic mark with a cover of the Beatles’ “With a Little Help of My Friends” at Woodstock on August 17th, 1969.[3] And yet “[c]ontrary to his image”, writes Jimmy Webb, “[he was] sober for most of his life.”[4] John Robert Cocker born 1944 in Sheffield, England, passed away after a battle with lung cancer in Colorado on 22nd December 2014.[5] His body and soul were a well weathered seventy years of living. And a voice from the depths of the earth which could break you into a thousand pieces and put you back together inside the time-frame of a song. There is a broad consensus in the music world that the bluesy and raspy Cocker was “without doubt the greatest rock/soul singer ever to come out of Britain.”[6] It is not surprising that one of his great musical influences was the pioneer of soul music himself, “The Genius” Ray Charles.[7]

There is a wonderful moment in time captured on video where a noticeably emotional Joe Cocker shares the stage with his boyhood hero to deliciously belt out one of his signature songs, Billy Preston’s and Bruce Fisher’s, You Are So Beautiful.[8]

Similarly to Joplin, his was not the most beautiful voice, but like Janis herself, it was one of the most recognizably soulful. A “soulful growl” some have called it. I came to Joe Cocker later in life but it was all the sweeter to make this discovery at a time when the great anthemic music of the 60s and 70s was disappearing. At high school like most of my mates I was into the progressive hard rock bands, soloists were not your typical “cool”.

In a characteristically relaxed interview with ZDFkultur, Joe Coker smiles: “My dad would say get a proper job.”[9]

An hour ago I was listening to Gabriel Fauré’s exquisite Requiem[10] and now I am enthralled by Cocker’s gravely sorrowing in “The Letter”. How is that possible? “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness” (Maya Angelou).

Sometimes it can be too difficult to pray, music is the only honest alternative.

Below is a selection of Joe Cocker songs which have accompanied me on various journeys. Two of my favourites are N‛oubliez Jamais (J. Cregan and R. Kunkel) “So dance your own dance, and never forget” and Unforgiven (M. Allen, K. Dioguardi, et al.) “As much as life seems less for living/ I still try”. Harold and Madge’s son might not have been a song writer nor learnt to play the guitar, but very few could cover a tune like he could and make it distinctively their own.

At Kiama Blowhole

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10 April 2016

Kiama, NSW

William Oscar McClleland, aged 28 years, drowned off Blowhole Point, October, 9, 1897; the incontestable beauty of a full-rigged ship; “Does anyone know where the love of God goes | When the waves turn the minutes to hours” (Gordon Lightfoot); pirates wore eye patches to adjust the volume of light; a young Mother walking with her two children which will soon pass her; a man in a red cap and a yellow shirt is counting down the minutes to his second resurrection; two fishermen in a small boat are glad to be alive; The Old Man and the Sea; an old angel in white sneakers is on house cleaning duties; the parkland is strewn with flight feathers from the morning take-offs; “The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss” (Douglas Adams); Kiama Lighthouse white group flashing 28,000 candelas; Mount Pleasant Lookout 3 miles; Fox Ground 6 miles; Garry Moore Parisienne Walkways; Picasso loved the circus; “Poetry is what I do in real life” (Les Murray); “And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it” (Gen 28:12); are there any coffee shops open; the seeds of berries; I must finish H.E. Smith’s Mark Twain; thank you serendipity for Robert Lax’s Circus of the Sun; Al-Sheikh al-Akbar The Meccan Revelations; Musa my dear friend, we are all of the book; Shalom Shabbazi ‘Shakespeare of Yemen’; Jung on myth and dreams; gili, gili; Oodgeroo Noonuccal formerly Kath Walker; Schopenhauer on reality but do not tell the children; the only sure thing with suffering what we make of it during the early hours of the morning; endurance derived from “the ability to last”; Pink Floyd shine on you crazy diamond; one awful trigger after another; do not give in to the cigar; “We hire people who can get inside the head of a customer” (Apple); they have, and they will; Peking toffee apples; inside humble exteriors of churches in the little village of Arbanassi hang titanic lightning bolts of colour; Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky); diptychs and icons; take a look inside Tasos Leivaditis’ large overcoat; the dance of the dervishes; the search for truth begins and ends with tears; philosophy can lead to bad pride; theology often enough to hubris; love as best you can and go about your business; why is everybody getting tattooed; the “mark” had many significations in the old world; Ink; Vladimir Nabokov loved pencils; a waterbird with a foot missing; commercial interests versus environmental concerns; the polar ice caps are melting like big blocks of butter; Immanuel Kant the categorical imperative and the inherent value of moral agency; I have an ongoing compassion for the Prince of Denmark; “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive” (Marcus Aurelius); political correctness does not like to be questioned; totalitarianism; fascism; New Atheism; ‘the invisible hand’ of Adam Smith; the ‘hand of God’ and Diego Maradona; my right arm is racked with arthritis; Ottmar Mergenthaler’s linotype machine was hot metal; “Rivers team with fish, and water’s clear. People spend their time inventing names for things they see” (Michael Sharkey); Dante Alighieri godfather to Petrarch and Boccaccio; 12… 1234… 12… 1234; saints above this might never end; it is getting cold; where are the socks; hide your true self; Superman starring George Keefer Brewer; “What’s My Line”; I have always liked Jack Lemmon; we are for the most engaging in dramaturgy and stagecraft; an essay on market forces and mechanization; we must be sure to distinguish between the two; one is economics and the other power of steam; like the gap between tenor and soprano; David Brooks transfigures the rooms of cities; Elena Shvarts birdsong escaping from a cage; here lies our beloved father, husband and grandfather Athas Xiros “This place you loved so much”; Sydney to Kiama 159 kilometres; no exit; kiosk; bus parking; Jack Gibson and Mick Cronin were born here; luxurious accommodation with a great cocktail bar; Charmian Clift Mermaid Singing completed in Lent; “Call me Ishmael” Moby-Dick or, The Whale; “The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down | Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee” (Gordon Lightfoot); where there are no biological clues it cannot be trusted; “This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it” (2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000); where are you Jacques Ellul; absolute efficiency; The Chicago School of Economics; a marshmallow can hit the earth with the force of a hydrogen bomb; “Stop the World – I Want to Get Off”; Google and Facebook feed on the desire for reputation; identities are bought and sold through brands; “We are the hollow men | We are the stuffed men | Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw” (The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot); Oskar Kokoschka and his life-size Alma Mahler doll; what if robots become better parents; oh Lord, what if baby robots are better children; beyond the stuff of dreams and more terrible than nightmares; Vladimir Tatlin goes straight for the bones; the great humility of Saint Francesco of Assisi; Wumen Huikai The Gateless Gate; blood pressure on the rise Zan-Extra; Eleni’s violin is missing the D String; jazz the arranged combination of accented downbeats and upbeats; byzantine chant and southern spirituals; the true joy of the mystics; “I will soothe you and heal you. I will bring you roses. I too have been covered in thorns” (Rumi); the high tides of the Bay of Fundy; as mysterious as the Caves of the Taurus Mountains; that is correct, Guildenstern, death is not a boat; honey bottled on the lips; the master of the seas Captain James Cook could not swim; bamal; gura; guwiyang; postcode 2533; are you still here; difficult to live nowadays; people have stopped loving; “Starry starry night” Vincent. 

Taking notes inside a Bucharest MacDonalds

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15 August 2011

Bucharest, Romania

 

I cut myself shaving this morning when I saw you in the mirror looking back at me; “you yourself are indeed another small world with the sun, moon and stars within you” (Origen); I thought he was a one-winged angel but he was carrying the shopping bag from the inside of his large coat; a deaf Beethoven composing the Appasionata; next to me a big woman has ordered her fourth burger and looks happily content like the Buddha in Bangkok; a young girl is sweeping the floors of broken dreams and timeworn drafts; a bearded old man with a broken ladder has skipped in to tell some stories; the suspicious manager with the gold teeth is keeping an eye on me; the fine-looking woman from across the road has walked off with a fallen angel who missed his train; people should reply to letters within a fortnight at most; George Orwell always replied to his letters even when he was dying; Leo Tolstoi was not an admirer of Shakespeare; a young fellow with a bald patch and a large nose is scratching his armpit in search of answers; I should have ordered the large Coke instead of this cheap beer; my feet hurt from all the running and the taking off; I love Valerie’s photo of Les sprouting up through the trunk of a great tree; a simple stone can fire the imagination with the same force as The Kneeling Nun of New Mexico; despite the heat the forecast for tomorrow is heavy rain followed by possible shipwrecks; more heavy sweeping of the floors and great loss of forensic evidence; Sylvia Plath’s cry for help; outside a little boy in a yellow shirt wishes he was a helicopter; Thomas Merton where are you on Saint Lucy’s Day; “sing us a song you’re the piano man, sing us a song tonight” (Billy Joel); notes inégales; what did Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus see; the woman with the one leg has pulled out a large map of the city from her silver purse; remember to ask how to get to Brasov; two old men pleased with the “special deal” are slapping each other on the shoulder and pointing to a place neither wants to go; I am now fifty years and a couple of days old; August 15th the Dormition of the Holy Mother; thank you my dearest Katina; a group of Gypsies are dancing on the street pointing to Ursa Major; we are made of the stuff of stars; one line can save a life more than a great book of a thousand pages; I wonder how many times Mircea Eliade walked up and down this street going about his eternal return; “Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy upon me the sinner”; at what point do we lose our capacity to know God; not random behaviour but yes a “fine tuning” of the universe; Francisco Goya the same as Caravaggio directly onto the canvas; CCTV is everywhere like a second skin which it will soon become; intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance; government denial; laser designators, multi-position mechanisms, skybox satellites; masters of spin, rumour mongers, buyers and sellers of corpses; “Dial F for Frankenstein” (Arthur C. Clarke); Google has actually re-invented the Trojan Horse; there is more to Samsung than you think; Lycett’s Dylan Thomas is another very good read; I cannot get this tune out of my head… I think it’s from the Electric Light Orchestra; OCD is one nightmare after another; Nicholas Tesla is so terribly underrated; a couple of weather wizards have dropped in; really glad to have read Tchaikovsky’s letters; nutcrackers and wooden dolls; you are punishing me, please reply to me; hot white glass slowly stretched; taxis on Bulevardul Banu Manta line the streets like a hive of bees; it all comes down to salvation; Okanokumo, clouds on the hill; maybe I will get some ice cream with caramel sauce; the dogs of Bucharest are in search of their long dead masters; “when you are old and grey and full of sleep and nodding by the fire” (W.B.Yeats); deep down we are all scared that we will be found out; how did Primo Levi really die; progress nowadays has to do with economics and I am sitting in one of its citadels; Augustine’s birds are too sharp this afternoon; I should probably delete this page; Art is no longer the point of beauty; the great gift of comprehension; algorithms will one day choose who amongst us will live or die; I wish that little girl with the green shoes would stop picking at her nose; freedom begins with forgiveness; the Divine Liturgy lifted my spirits today; The Brothers Karamazov dealt atheistic idealism a heavy blow; we are all condemned because one child has died of hunger; hours are sometimes even more precious than love; compassion is the most wonderful of all words; racism is the root of all evil; maybe I should have changed rooms last week; ice particles shape-shift under the sunlight to cause an avalanche; like the hair of an angel which falls to earth; I want to die a good man; Oh, Lord! So many letters I never should have written; Michael Faraday one of humankind's best; beautiful flowers splashed in white; without coal our world would be plunged into darkness; who are the ringmasters; Nero and every other tyrant obsessed with popularity aka “Likes”; the Apocalypse has hurt my mind yet it has not robbed me of hope; “666” I have seen it and it is a merciless thing; Nostradamus relishes playing hind n’ seek with big children; Big Brother is growing enormously fat; be warned Kafka understood ICT; the ghosts in the machine will not need to rest and they will convince us they are not there; please God, please merciful Father, keep the black dog away; sturm und drang; “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence” (Robert Frost); let me be absent from the next to last holocaust; the bones of monks; the fragrant oils of the ossuary; often the real drama is at the back of the pack; the shadow belongs to the thing from which it drops; like prophetic dreams which are not conditional to knowledge; no, I am sorry Ghenadie, I cannot do that; the rhinophores and gills of the nembrotha cristata; the Moab desert in Utah was once home to fish; on Naxos midget elephants have been trapped in stone; and then like John Steinbeck “gradually I write one page and then another”; I will go now and make sure to look for a short-cut; an impossibility like a little book on Chinese motifs.   

Flemington Markets and the Art of Prayer

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June 1995

Katina was in the second year of her IT degree at UTS and I had started on another postgraduate programme this time with Macquarie. I needed to find some payable work, we were managing but our personal finances were starting to run low. My pride and self-belief suffered another severe blow when I joined the ranks of those on unemployment benefits. I was now no longer someone who was greeted with the respect accorded to a professional, let alone a member of the clergy. The consequences of my decision inside my own community where very often even more wounding. From Reverend or Father I was now a “number” doing the rounds knocking on doors and looking for regular work. It was humbling to be asked if I understood or knew how to complete the paperwork relating to my new found unemployment. Things were made all the more grim, for my former “employer” the Archdiocese would not supply me with a reference, especially given that it was I who had asked to be relieved of the diaconate[1]. I was “disrespectful” of authority they said, a “trouble-maker”. In the end they would call me “mad”. The exception was the heroic Father Themistocles Adamopoulo,[2] who by this time was himself out of favor and set to join the ranks of the persona non grata.

Anyone who questioned the High Porte was mad. I asked some other good men from within those walls, but their support was qualified. They wanted to know beforehand “where” their testimonials would be going. I understood their predicament yet had to decline. Two generous souls from the clerical fraternity who were outside my immediate environment, but who did supply me with wonderful references at a vital time not long afterwards to greatly lift my spirits, were my former lecturers from the University of Sydney, the Reverend Dr David Coffey[3] and Bishop Paul Barnett.[4] Such grace and charity touch you for life and are not to be easily forgotten. They must be paid forward. There is to be found one of the great joys of living.

It took some weeks getting used to, but I began to love going to my new job at Paddy’s Markets in Flemington, near Homebush Bay.[5] It was a time of long stretches of peace and a new type of learning. I was hired as a cleaner: toilets, floors, potato conveyers, fruit crates, large vats, giant coleslaw mixers, windows, walls, and more. If it had to be cleaned, I was the man! I was also proud of my new ‘vestments’: a pair of weatherproof boots, gloves, overalls, and a yellow raincoat with a hood. The hours as well, they suited an old night-owl like me. Work started eleven at night and I would clock off the following morning around seven, it was not full-time so I had rest days in between. There were many things I enjoyed during those few months that I was able to stay at Paddy’s before I left to focus on the dissertation, the one dealing with the “666” conundrum and the tradition history of antichrist.[6] Each night I looked forward to greeting my new ‘con-celebrants’: the Asians who would cut and prepare the salads; the sunburnt farmers; the busy stall owners; the testy truck drivers; and every now and then the pest-control fellow who would also moonlight as a Reiki Master.

The coffee-breaks were history classes in themselves. I heard many stories in that small kitchenette by well-weathered men who had seen much and done it all. These were tough but honest folk, people you could trust and where you quickly learnt to call “a spade a spade and a spud a spud.” They would remind me of the abattoir workers I used to help load the meat trucks in the early hours of the morning when I was a student in Thessaloniki. They were also not lacking in the stories department. During this time at the markets I would read whenever I could steal a few minutes during the morning breaks or in between my scheduled jobs. The Philokalia[7] and the Art of Prayer[8] were invariably within reach, together with the lives of two saints whose personalities had especially attracted me, Saints Seraphim of Sarov and John of Kronstandt. Yet again I would be taught that marvellous and encouraging lesson often heard on Mount Athos: it is not the place, but the Way. Other times it might be as simple as the positive energy good spirits release into the air. 

Given my earlier life at the café this was not unfamiliar territory. I was in my element in these environments. I look back thirty years when I first put on the cassock and I realize it is with these ‘straight-talking’ people at places like Paddy’s markets and Egnatia Odos and King Street, Newtown, where I am most happy and comfortable. And I would have stayed at Flemington for much longer if not for my pride “this perpetual nagging temptation” according to C.S. Lewis and because I knew there was some unfinished business as Martin Heidegger might say.

 

And Secretly Bless Them

The young priest, Grigori Mikhailovich, was now unemployed. It seemed that there were two Gospels; they should have informed him of this during orientation week he had thought. He made the hard decision to keep on with the traditional version. Unemployed priests who chose to receive the “older story” would find some few hours of work at Flemington Markets. The young priest Grigori chose the graveyard shift where he was introduced to other exiled cleaners. He would put on his yellow uniform and waterproof overshoes with pride and honour. He remembered the “putting on of the vestment prayers” when he would prepare for the Divine Liturgy, and these he would now recite once more. Though no one knew that he was once a priest, they would instinctively call him “Father” and he would rejoice and secretly bless them through the soap suds and the potato crates.[9]

 

[1]

[2] http://world.greekreporter.com/2014/11/13/rock-star-turned-greek-priest-fights-ebola-in-sierra-leone/

[3] http://www.marquette.edu/mupress/CoffeyPM.shtml

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Barnett_(bishop)

[5] http://paddysmarket.com.au/history/

[6]

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4qtQ6AUrRE

[8] http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Prayer-Orthodox-Anthology/dp/0571191657

[9] M.G. Michael, Southerly, Golden Tongues: The Arts of Translation, 70/1 (2010), p. 32f.

Waiting at Helsinki Airport

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26 September 2011

Helsinki, Finland

Helsinki Airport best airport in the world in 1999; Alko, Heureka Shop, Luxbag, Moomin Shop, Stockmann, Reader’s, Timanttiset, Santa’s Gift & Toy Store; silence is understood in this country or you have to pay; to the left and to the right angels waiting for their flights; I should get some more postcards; it is very expensive here; a little princess has lost her eye; the tall man with the broken glasses is rummaging through his bags; there are places we will never know exist; the flight to Frankfurt has been pushed back; the Tibetan Book of the Dead also speaks to the living; my first television memory The Beatles in 1963; the hands clasped in prayer like the embouchure of a trumpet player who sets the mouth; like the startling discovery that in modal music C is where F should be; the low drones of the didgeridoo the Holy Spirit speaking in tongues; shadows fall over surfaces becoming part of them; we take our great secrets to the post office and to the grave; I have enjoyed reading Thomas Tranströemer; spiritual imagination can transcend theology; matrix mechanics and quantum jumps; Saint Patrick was a Scott; detective novels are everywhere; John Klimakos’ stairway to heaven meets Led Zeppelin; a weeping Beethoven clutching pillows to his ears; “The man has done his task” (Arthur Schopenhauer); I need more coffee and would like another chocolate croissant; there are lots of handsome people in the Baltics; lust robs of us of our most creative years; last night I dreamt of birds and flying suitcases; a young barefoot woman making eyes at the boy is perjuring herself on her mobile; two friends are exchanging gifts and promises which one of them will not keep; Peter Williams’ J. S. Bach: A Life in Music is beautiful; Muddy Waters wrote his own story; please, Lord, let me find those answers to my questions; mental health can make all the difference; I must send Les more translations; we all carry a book with a big story; Vikram Seth did not like to be called “Vicky”; the ruined temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion writes poetry during the hours of eventide; in Sumer words written in cuneiform were left out to dry; reading used to be a performance; I must stop worrying myself over Martin; Maximus the Confessor lost his tongue; “Say it, no ideas but in things” (Williams Carlos Williams); may I never, never have thought of überveillance; four more hours before I board for Hong Kong; maybe I should have spoken to that ABC reporter; stop… stop… stop… stop… 12 1234 12 1234 12 1234; Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan; … stop… stop… stop… stop… 12 1234 12 1234 12; Cobalt Blue, Electric Blue, Midnight Steel Blue, True Blue; a little girl with a bald doll is arguing with her Mother who dropped their passports; lots of things are underestimated like the beauty and value of paperweights; and the French horn trying to break into jazz; I need to polish my shoes; the Pope wears red slippers and can fly a helicopter; an old man has fallen asleep with a half-closed book on his lap; when will this flesh be controlled that pure prayer might stand a chance; Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name; please do not abandon me; an impossibility like a little book on Chinese motifs; the Finns epic poets and rune singers of the Kalevala; “Between the motion/ And the act /Falls the Shadow” (T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men); electricity is fuel; electromagnetism and electrochemistry; Albert Einstein loved both Spinoza and Faraday; a star is a gigantic glowing ball of gas; see Burton’s anatomy of melancholia; In the beginning was the word.