All Bent Over

"People often remark that I'm pretty lucky. Luck is only important in so far as getting the chance to sell yourself at the right moment. After that, you've got to have talent and know how to use it." - Frank Sinatra

Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became a successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, being the idol of the "bobby soxers." His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1954 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (for his performance in From Here to Eternity).
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I have to stop right here and mention my love affair with Sinatra. When I was in high school, he was at the top of his game. My dad had many records. I learned his music and phrasing, and I would go find places to practice alone and hidden. I can sing along with this one still, and several others. The first musical form I learned completely by heart was big band swing and this is a perfect example of that form. The syncopation and phrasing of the music background frames a solo artist just about perfectly. I still know the form. I am very grateful to Sinatra and miss him terribly as an artist. He got old. Then he died. It is in the nature of things. Some people disliked him for his mob connections. That never bothered me. I have been outlaw myself. Sometimes it just rolls that way. Luck.
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"Luck affects everything; let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it, there will be a fish." - Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria. He is also well known for the Metamorphoses, a mythological hexameter poem; the Fasti, about the Roman calendar; and the Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, two collections of poems written in exile on the Black Sea.



"Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf." - Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931) is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.

The wisdom has it, if you want to check your elevated state, simply measure yourself against what it's like to return to your family of origin. That's a failsafe, surefire way to know if you are still human, not yet a saint.

I learned in this business long ago, that you only need one example of smallness to be present to put the lie to greathearted exaltation. That's a good thing for the likes of me. I can get going on a speedfreak roll, like those nights once were like, staring into the blank TV screen, and talk myself into all sorts of idiocy if I am not careful. One lady friend of mine accused her former husband of spinning marijuana dreams after years of sobriety. That's me. Really, I am much better than I used to be through much pain and practice but the spin doctor is still present in my life.

All Bent Over

You said drop that load
and I said I can't, meant it
just like that, refused.
If I dropped my load
I would float, lose my purchase
and go who knows where.
I am not built right
to fly free. Plodding along,
that's me. My back hurts.

September 28, 2009 8:29 AM