RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 90 Making Cars Clarity. I think that's the best word I can use to try and approximate what it was I was seeking to achieve. It was my feeling that most people  -  those  I knew and had seen and grown up  with  -  had missed that. They worked through their lives in a working form of confusion; it passed muster, yes, but for most people I ever saw they'd never brought anything to states of having been defined, decided upon, and effected. The rest of their lives and times just seem ad hoc, by the moment, reactions. In my life, the people who have affected me the  most, stunned me, even, have been  those who appeared to me to have reached 'clarity.' All ages, all varied sorts of people. It was always good. I never reacted to fashion, money, looks, and all that  -  motorcycles, artists, workers, teachers, it was this 'clarity' that I always reacted to, and sought. Running for President? OK. Show me

RUDIMENTS, pt. 89 Making Cars Sometimes I used to think the life I saw was not much more than a constant do-over, mostly by the same people (a vast 'everyone'), repeating themselves while trying to convince each their that  their acts and rituals meant something.  Frankly, it was all up in the air and  anything could (can) always be said to signify whatever you wish to have it signify. That was the 'cinch' on everything that the real, normal, world tried to constantly keep tightened. As much as possible, tight. Sometimes so sinfully tight that even a smile between strangers could be misconstrued.  I remember one street-murder guy confessing, as to why had he lunged at someone and stabbed with a knife : 'He smiled at me.' I guess things like that are why we have laws, and cops. That sort of broken faith that yet endures was always curious  -  and sorrow-filled  -  to me. -   Another thing I noticed was  how people  kept going back  to

RUDIMENTS, pt. 88 Making Cars I look back now and I realize how much of everything from those 1967 days was nothing but a pretense. It was so very simple to put something over on people, there being so little foundational knowledge, by the common schmuck of the level I grew up with. In about 1968, for instance, there was this really almost horrid, pretentious, little musical group called 'The Incredible String Band.' I've always disliked performed live music in every way, so that, in my entire adult life, I've only attended two concerts, both quite minor. One was a Sarah Vaughn songbook/Gershwin thing, with a live, symphony orchestra (I was given 2 free tickets), and the other was this String Band Concert. It was high Hippie-dom, beads, bangles, wispy girls in flowing skirts, and weak-looking guys. They played mandolins, lutes, guitars, chimes and stuff, and sang about ducks and birds and dreams and wishes. It was a sort