Happy New Year! And a wonderful, auspicious, prosperous and whatever else 2008 to all of you. Including that dirtball in the comments section who didn't like "Go Blue Go Die."
I spent my New Year's Eve and Day at Tassajara Zen Monastery in Carmel Valley, California and it was wonderful beyond words. I'm too sleepy to write a lot of details tonight. Besides, I'm staying at the San Francisco Zen Center for a few days and they require you to get up at 5AM and do Zazen, so I'm not gonna stay up late typing in this stupid blog.
But among the zillions of truly nice things that happened at Tassajara, here's one interesting (to me, anyway) one. I was just reading about Bob Dylan's famous "basement tapes" -- the "lost" album he recorded in 1967, some of which was released around 1975 but most of which remains unreleased even today. Reading about the tapes made me want to listen to them. But you have to search pretty hard to find the bootlegs that contain the best stuff. I had vague plans to do this after I left Tassajara.
Well. It just so happens I was talking to a long term resident at Tassajara named David Coady. I was telling him about this Dylan song I'd been listening to recently called "Odds and Ends" that contains the very Dogen-like line, "Lost time will not be found again." The song is one of the few "basement tapes" items to have been officially released.
And he mentions that the only things he saved from a once mighty and extensive collection of CDs was a little box containing a few Dylan CDs including the entire 5 disc series of bootleg "Basement Tapes." He was kind enough to lend these to me and I am now uploading them into iTunes even as I type this.
Weird, huh?
Anyway, here's a song (not from the "basement tapes") I've been thinking of lately that seems to encapsulate much of my feeling of late. It's not one of my own this time. It's by Robyn Hitchcock from his album Stars For Bram. Click on the song title to hear it.
Goodnight!
DAISY BOMB
by Robyn Hitchcock
Sometimes a bomb is not enough
To express the way I feel
And an explosion in the dark
Won't let you down
Sometimes a kiss is not enough
You just have to make it two
Darling I love you inside out
And upside down
I love you
Like a bomb
In my heart
Sometimes a kiss goes on so long
And it just won't let you go
Darling I love you inside out
And upside down
I love you
Like a bomb
In my heart
Daisy bomb
Daisy bomb
Daisy bomb
