44 Here Comes Coy to Save the Motherland

[alice wellintown]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 12:47 AM, Michael Bailey
<michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com> wrote:
> you stress the somewhat dystopian elements of the picture...
> not unrightfully, perhaps, although for me personally the
> musician/artist mindset is several settings away from the
> student-activist mindset...

P stresses the dystopian. We've discussed the moments, transcient
moments of Grace, these, like the Rose Bush on the threshold of that
inauspicious portal that Hester Pryne and the narrative crosss, and
like Hester herself, and little Pearl, by some Grace, only G-d can
know the measure of (Pirate's Bananas), some fortune, shine one like
crazy diamonds. In IV and in VL,  the artist who crosses over to the
political side, like Frenesi with her camera (the camera is a Gun, a
phalic instrument of control and violence) may find his/her way back
to the fold, but will pay a very dear price. Why did Coy need to turn
to the people he did to get help? Why were there no options? There
were options. Why didn't he exercise them?


> and student-activism often
> falls prey to some form of love's labors lost, while devotion
> to music is more profitable for the soul if not always for the wallet

True.


>
> -  So the loss of Harlingen's prospective activism
> due to junk doesn't seem as poignant as the waste of his talent
> on the uncongenial genre of surf music, and the waste of his
> substance in the dope habit...

True.


>
> junk wasn't an unmitigated disaster.  Admittedly it was very bad,
> but it was what brought them together
> in the first place.

Why is there coming together positive? I don't see this.

> I was interested to note that Coy's version of the story was
> very different from Penny's conjecture, about setting up credibility
> for Coy among militant antiwar circles...
> unless he's not being completely candid with Doc.
> He does seem confused, and his wife might not have
> fully informed him about the deal she'd made, so when he
> fell in with the vigilantes his natural sense of pitch is what
> alerted him to how out of tune their plans are, rather than
> any form of political analysis.  I don't think there's anything
> in the text about Coy being in SDS...

He says he wanted to do something for his Motherland. Like SDS, he got
squeezed by the War and the factions that supported and opposed it.
Coy is a patriot. He thought he could do something good for his
country. He was't wrong. Just didn't know how to go about it; who to
work for/with.

>
> True, there's not any parallel drawn between musical intonation
> and politics (Plato had some ideas about it, but I'm with
> Gaddis in thinking Plato a bit of a fascist) - so perhaps the real
> source of his antiwar thinking is the sympathy he's learned by being
> a junkie, and the recognition of the same syndrome w/r/t Vietnam.

He needed junk to see the light; he needed to fall into hell to
realize what a nightmare Vietnam is, and what a nightmare he has made
of his life? I can't buy that.

>From our house in the favela, I see Him; His arms open to welcome all
the brown bodies swaying, we laugh, we love, we sing, We Dance. That's
no junk. That is Life.


Estou morrendo de saudade
Rio, I’m dying from longing for you
Rio, teu mar, praias sem fim
Rio, your ocean beaches without end
Rio, você foi feito pra mim
Rio, you were made for me
Cristo Redentor
Christ the Redeemer
Braços abertos sobre a Guanabara
Open arms over the Gguanabara Bay
Este samba é só porque
This samba is only because
Rio, eu gosto de você
Rio, I like you
A morena vai sambar
The brunette is going to samba
Seu corpo todo balançar
Her whole body sways
Rio de sol, de céu, de mar
Rio of sun, of sky, of sea