Ronnie James Dio, 1942-2010

I think he would have appreciated the description, "Mephistophelean."

The great Ronnie James Dio is dead. His career in Rock parallels my own years of caring about it: when he was great, I was really into it. And as I cared less and less about rock generally and Heavy Metal specifically, Dio's centrality in the musical universe faded to the margins. Dio, however, stayed great and rocked as hard as ever. He died old and racked with disease, but he was still Great.

Ronnie James Dio sang with Rainbow, Black Sabbath and Dio. The New York Times obituary describs Dio's "powerful, semioperatic vocal style and attachment to demonic imagery," that "made him one of the best-loved figures in classic heavy metal..."

"No cause was given in the announcement, but Mr. Dio had been suffering from stomach cancer, and recently his band Heaven and Hell canceled its summer tour because of his health. The Houston Chronicle reported that Mr. Dio was being treated at a hospital in Houston."

Now, Dio was a small guy. He was so small, so scrawny, so under-nourished, one wonders if his stomach turned on him after years of neglect. Perhaps whatever inner demons he had won out, despite his best attempts to purge them through song. Or maybe it was the luck of the draw, as everyone who dies, dies from something. I imagine, whatever the case with Dio, he met the Reaper with bravado and a certain familiarity. I bet he had some kind of deal that the lords of death accepted. And Death never strikes a deal.

"Mr. Dio..."—Oh, the New York Times!—".. was born Ronald James Padavona in Portsmouth, N.H., and grew up in Cortland, N.Y. He began his career in rockabilly bands in the late 1950s, but by the mid-1970s, when Ritchie Blackmore, the guitarist of the British band Deep Purple, hired him to sing for his new band, Rainbow, Mr. Dio had become a heavy-metal purist, and he became known as much for his vocal prowess as for his Mephistophelean stage persona."

Now, "Mephistophelean" connotes an apostle from Hell, whose duty is to speak for the Devil. And that Apostle is pained by his relationship to Satan, sometimes depicted as being The Dark Lord's catamite. That doesn't fit Dio: he insisted:

If it seems to be real, it's illusion
For every moment of truth, there's confusion in life
Love can be seen as the answer,
but nobody bleeds for the dancer

You've got to bleed for the dancer!
Look for the answer!

His was a message of goodness, shrouded in darkness and mystery and the confusion from that. Kind of like dreams are the portal to our individual realities, even though they are often frightening and mysterious, and happen at night with our eyes closed.

Well OK, maybe not. But he wasn't about evil. He was about divining answers from all our experience, not just from Dad's and Mom's capitalistic exhortations of discipline and worry. Trust me on this one.

"He is widely credited," the Times continues, "with popularizing the 'devil horn' hand gesture — index and pinky fingers up, everything else clenched in a fist — as a symbol of metal’s occult-like worship of everything scary and heavy."

OK, this obituary writer guy is mad because he was picked on in school, but rejected by the bandana-wristed Def Leppard-ites. And now his Editors, I bet, are sitting on his requests to do restaurant reviews. And Dio pays the price.

"Mr. Dio sang about devils, defiance and the glory of rock ‘n’ roll with a strong, mean voice, punctuating his points with gale-force vibrato, a style derived in part from singers like Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan."

This is erroneous. Dio reclaimed big vocals from Gillian's and other progressive rockers' comic operatics. I want that said.

"When Ozzy Osborne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, Mr. Dio replaced him, and by 1983 he released the album 'Holy Diver' with his own band, Dio. In various lineup configurations, the band Dio continued to release material in the mid-2000s.

"In 2006 he began playing with some of his former band mates in Black Sabbath, naming the group Heaven and Hell after the title of the first Black Sabbath album on which Mr. Dio appeared. Heaven and Hell released one album, “The Devil You Know,” in 2009.

"Other than his wife, no information about his survivors was immediately available on Sunday afternoon."

Translation: "Names of Mr Dio's demon spawn are unavailable as they scatter for crevices in the temporal woodwork."
















Pict1944

—
Times

Columbus Day

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

This he did indeed. In the generation that has passed since the 500th anniversary of this voyage, Columbus has become a main icon of Old World violence visited on the New. He's the bad guy, and Columbus Day changed quickly from a free day off, to a day we mark with embarrassment and apology. Is that fair?

America in the 21st century is arguably as violent a place as anywhere in Columbus' times. (Check here and here for starters, and let a library point you to 1,000 other sources.) This is based on many complex factors, not the least of which is that Europeans brought to these shores their culture of impressive violence. Once in the new world, French, English, Spanish and Native Americans shot and hacked at each other for about 300 years. Their descendants turned on each other, probably salving their doubts about the violence they all rained upon slaves and Indians. In the present, we export our anger to smaller nations that are convenient targets for economic tantrums, and we allow our kids to kill each other regularly in school.

We are a violent people, that's for sure.

So how is this Columbus's fault? Well, it's very convenient to blame others for our own problems, especially if they are historical, and the fashion is to condemn the past. But one can easily condemn the past:

• Our Founding Fathers crafted an representative government, but many held slaves.
• The Spanish colonized America to gain wealth and save souls, but church and soldiers alike destroyed natives by the millions.
• Showing total disregard for humanity, world leaders fought World War I using mechanized weaponry, but with pre-mechanized strategies. Eight and a half million people were killed in four and a half years.

Only assholes do these things.

Leading Opinion insists history is a continuum of human activity. We are no more removed from Columbus as we are from Watergate, just because we remember one more vividly. You see, all people do stuff, great and small, that affects people around them. Younger people carry the effects over, do stuff of their own, affect others... Before you know it, four generations and 100 years have passed. History is ongoing, and it changes just as every day changes for you—you see the effects when you compare your appearance to your high school graduation photo, but you always feel like the same 18-year-old. Time feels like it moves around you and past you; you age in place, while TV shows change and people older than you pass away.

So that's what happened to Columbus, too. He did his thing, made a little money and got a good pedigree for his time. (And he came from pretty much nothing.) The Americas were ransacked, but it wasn't his problem because he gave them to Spain, pretty much. Spain was powerful and mean, between wars as it was with two other powerful and mean entities. America was a chance to both expand and get away from Europe, and all of Europe thought so. Naturally, they took their European (powerful and mean) realities to America and killed everything in reach. People in the lead at any given time or place, since 1492, inherited the realities and carry on the traditions, down to today when we kill each other over arguments about who's actually killing each other. In sum, Columbus didn't really start it; he had antecedent Columbuses of his own, going back into the mists of time.

We really are a violent people, and kid ourselves that the violence is self-defense, or justified in some other way. "I do violence only because he did it first!" And so often done in the name of a man who insisted that we take it, let violence happen to us, if we want to break the chain.

So let's let Columbus be. If we wish to find the locus of violence against innocents in the world, or over time, let's look no further than our immediate sphere. Teach your descendents that bullying is bad, that fighting is unnecessary, that guns are dangerous. Be nice to each other, help out in small ways. (BIG ways, if you're so inclined.) Hug people you love, maybe even some you don't, laugh as often as you can. Do yoga. These small actions will make your sphere better; several spheres together make an ecosystem; several ecosystems make an environment.

From there, many environments make a world.

Discover a new world! Happy Columbus Day!

Herm! Shut UP!!

In chapter two of Melville's Moby Dick, "The Carpet-Bag," we get our earliest contact with the special something in the book that makes so many Moby Dick readers Moby Dick haters. Melville has his first of an authorial condition of chronic tics—occasional, but definite and sometimes severe. It's a jarring change for modern readers, who probably have a tenuous relationship with old literature going in. I mean, the difference is totally obvious between:

He had to be lying. Their intelligence was too good. If the kid was a student, they’d know where, for how long, what field of study, how good were the grades, or how bad. They’d know. He was a clerk in a Computer Hut in a mall. Nothing more or less. Maybe he planned to enroll somewhere. Maybe he’d dropped out but still liked the notion of referring to himself as a part-time student. Maybe it made him feel better, gave him a sense of purpose, sounded good.

and:

TRUE!—NERVOUS—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am! but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story.

The first passage is from Grisham's Runaway Jury; the second from Poe's Tell Tale Heart. The first is not likely to be considered great literature, though gripping and very entertaining. The second is in the canon of great literature, but everyone except English teachers hates it. So it is with great works of art and church—they probably have all the answers, but I ain't goin' anywhere near 'em. But here I am with Moby Dick, as proxy for you, dear reader. Deeper meanings will be revealed through our effort, and we can gain at least for now a real affection for the awfulness of the experience. You never really know what will happen; plus, this is how Leading Opinion becomes.

So anyway, Ishmael gets to New Bedford, but has missed the ship he hoped for. Having time to kill until the next opportunity, he traipses about for a place to stay, looking for the cheapest possible accommodations. You'll recall Ishmael revealed he is loathe to spend money, and I wondered if this was an adroit poke at the Yankee sense of frugality as moral perfection, or demonstration of it. Whichever it may be, it returns and we see it as a continuing, unifying idea. One of probably 30, right?

Ishmael gets to the crummy side of town, and at a place called "The Trap," stumbles into an African American church service. It's clear to me that the association between church and "trap" is intentional. As we saw in the first chapter, religion is largely what the work is about. But what other associations can we make between "trap" and—

1. the condition of African Americans in New England in 1851?
2. the issue of emancipation in the United States at the time?
3. Melville's (or Ishmael's) attitude toward Blacks?
4. Christians in general and African Americans, vis á vis the above?

I'm not certain, but I can guess. And you need something to comment on.

Ishmael comes to "The Spouter Inn:—(sic) Peter Coffin." He decides this has to be the place; then he proceeds to go insane. Now, I chose the word carefully—Melville's narrative proceeds with a total rant. With numerous meanings, probably, but it's a total rant anyway. And what about that order? Ishmael says, "I'll take it," then starts hollering about it. Here's where I suggest an additional interpretation to this "Great American Novel": The main character is bananas, off his rocker, a Kook.

I'm asking you to consider this. A new, alternative reading of Moby Dick.

He bellows about Euroclydon, St. Paul, Orien, and some "Old Dives" (DEE-vess), the rich guy in the parable of Lazarus and the rich guy (Luke 16: 19-21). All of this just one big fart about being cold but self-sufficient but still cold, or being inside and warm but in a false luxury from exploiting the innocent.

Jeez, Herm, don't just say that or anything! No, please just go off instead, like some crazy emperor who has a whole generation of babies killed, or... Listen to me rant, will ya.

Alright, so Ishmael (Melville) goes off, yelling about everything he can think of, to what?—show Hawthorne who can roll out the most bellicose, multi-level christian sentence? (If I'm Hawthorne, I'm all, "You win, dude. Please go home now.") Whatever. Ishmael then just says, "Guess I'll go in and get a room."

Herman Melville, you are a dog. And I am hitting you on the snout with a rolled up newspaper from here on to stop your incessant baying.

Shut UP!!

Moby Dick; or, The Yawner Whale

I have begun Herman Melville's Moby Dick. Again. Probably the 50th time. So maybe, re-begun is more apt. Whatever the right word, I begin with the intention to not only finish it, but to come away enriched. I just read The Great Gatsby, admittedly in conjunction with the new Baz Lurhrman movie, and I did get more out of it this second time around. Full disclosure: I researched Gatsby a lot as I read it, and the meaning I got is directly from all the analysis I read in the research. (Without that research, it might be just another book.) I will do the same with Moby Dick, and while my learnings may be imitation, I will report it honestly.

"Call me Ishmael." One of the most notable first lines in all literature, perhaps up there with "In the beginning,..." Melville apparently was very connected to Nathaniel Hawthorne as he began Moby Dick, and was enamored of Hawthorne's predilection to deep, religious meaning. Setting out to write something as deep, as theological as Hawthorne's work, could Melville have purposely opened the book as such, hoping for a boffo first line? Well, he was a good and popular writer—why not?

Why, also, Ishamael? Ishmael was the first son of Abraham, born of his union with a slave. When Abraham's preferred, legitimate son was born later, there was tension in the blended family. Ishamael and his mother were banished. The boy was promised by God that he'd begin an entire line of humanity. Old Testament writers use Ishmael thus to explain Arabs, the "problem kids" (to them) in the region. Islam, on the other hand, sees Ishmael as the preferred son of Abraham to begin with. (Witness the deep roots of discord in the Levant.) Christians use Ishmael as a marker between "old Covenant" (the Ten Commandments) and "new Covenant" (redemption through Christ). Ishmael could be have been seen by Melville as a character who obscures any clarity of God and his several deals with humanity across biblical history.

Then there's the instruction, "Call me Ishmael", rather than "my name is" or "I am called.." My own paranoia (minor, but there) sees a guy saying that as a way of keeping another identity a secret. ("Who am I? Never mind that—call me Ishmael...") Not so weird, thank you, when you consider the secrecy in Ishmael's timing his story: "Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—...I thought I would sail about a little..." "Never mind"? What in God's name are you hiding? (And what, maybe, do I mean by that?) Whatever the truth to these mysteries, real or perceived, they are the very stuff of greatness, a continuing lineage (the "Pynchon Line," perhaps?) of brilliant but impossible literature.

Ishmael explains why he heads to sea. He gets antsy in ordinary life and has a regular need to get to the bottom of it all. Water is elemental to life itself, and heading to sea reacquaints Ishmael with that. He enjoys the freedom he finds on the high seas, despite the necessary servitude to command. But after all, life in general is one merciless cuff after another from superiors, right? Ishmael also prefers being paid for the healthful work of a common sailor, rather than paying for leisurely passage. Spending money is a distasteful aspect he will leave on shore, an insight into Melville's Yankee sensibility where income sanctifies even the basest toil. But wait—could this be something of an American theology, if you will, that Melville lays out so he can examine it later? Or can we exploit this later as a fatal exposition of his 1850s religiosity?

Whatever happens with my own criticism of the work, Melville gives us the working basis of the book at the end of this first chapter: A whale is what fascinates him and prompts this particular voyage. Maybe whales are elemental to the sea, just as the sea is elemental to life. A whale is the thing that the Fates push him to—unless, maybe, the whale is the Fates.

We'll see.

(The late) Tom Collins

So a funny thing happened last night. I'm at the restaurant—nothing major, just Thursday Chinese to get the weekend started—and I decided to have a cocktail rather than a Kirin. Summer's here, after all, and the time is right… I ask the server for that consummate summer refresher, a Tom Collins.

"What's that?" he asked. Oh my.

"Oh, you know," I replied, "gin, Collins mix, ice." He din't know what I meant.

"'Collins mix'? I've never heard of this."

OK. Times change. And it turns out Collins mix is extinct. (Schwepps, why have you forsaken me?) But I thought a Tom Collins was one of those basic drinks that survive, like a Manhattan, Old Fashioned, and Martini. You know, standing the test of time, not dated, like the Appletini, the Tequila Sunrise, or the Purple Hooter. I'm wrong, though: Tom Collins is forgotten.

So here you go, drink resuscitators! Tom Collins:

• shot of gin
• 1/2 shot lemon juice
• 1 tsp of sugar

Fill a shaker with ice. Add gin, juice and sugar. Shake with your personal style, and strain into a Collins glass filled with ice. Top off with club soda, then garnish with a maraschino cherry and an orange slice.

Grasp with confidence, walk to pool with casual unconcern.

A letter home...

Dear Earth:

BYE!!

Love,

The Maya

Hard-boiled egghead (pun)

As you know, Leading Opinion enjoys hard-boiled detective fiction. (Or maybe it's clearer to say, fiction in the hard-boiled detective genre.) However one best says it, I just finished three of those kinds of books.

Mark Coggins writes a blog at sfgate and he writes detective fiction. Runoff is set in San Francisco and is fun to imagine if you've spent any time in the City. The plot was really creative and the twists and turns showed an intelligent ability to craft a good story. But Coggins writes like a college essayist. His language, his style, is not very individual. And that takes something away from the curt insights of hard-boiled characters.

Michael Raleigh writes about Chicago. Death in Uptown is very good and it has all the weird twists good detective rags need. And his insights and descriptions are very good. But Uptown, like so many other detective novels, is mostly about the case and only strays into those interesting departures in thought and observation that demonstrate the calculus of the detective: A lonely person who solves crimes at the edge of civility because they are compelled to correct injustice in the shadows.

Such departures add to the twists and turns, because the detective as an ordinary, flawed guy necessarily contributes to the confusion and the circus of events. Hammett found it, Chandler perfected it, Spillane condensed it to one line. Granted, that’s pretty fast company. And to be fair to Coggins and Raleigh, maybe the editors excise all that good stuff because the average reader needs 6th-grade level. Whatever the case, it’s like The Mad Scientists Club—great, especially when that was my level. But I’m older now, and I expect more literary effort.

Then there’s James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss. Absent are all the limitations I note; all the strengths I admire are present. It’s very good. The case gets solved in the middle, which tells you everything you need to know. Back to the edge of your seat—there's MORE!