"Once more, once."
Something Count Basie would say when the band was asked to play it again, and they always did play it again.
I've had three of these blog things and ended up taking them down after a while, mainly because I wasn't happy with what I wrote and partly to punish myself for having the unbridled nerve to expose real feeling and emotion, other than anger, which seems to be the prevalent emotion of the 21st century. This time, I anticipate it will be different. A little different, not too much, because there is a great deal to write about and, like Willy Sutton's reason for robbing banks (look it up), it seems perfectly natural for me to do what I enjoy doing. It's fun.
Fun. You remember fun, don't you? Writing for me is fun. There are many things that I believe are fun, some of which others don't believe are thus, but as a rule, those folks don't generally have much fun. They are, as Mrs. Banks sang so memorably (watch the movie), "as a group, rather stupid."
If any of you watch the Sunday talk shows or are glued to C-SPAN, CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, you know what I mean. Everyone is annoyed, everyone is shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, by the behavior of all but themselves and, in general, have a sour outlook on life and what delights there are everywhere you look. I'm no Polyanna (my name is Anthony) and I'm more than a little aware of the collective trouble we're all in; which, parenthetically, we ourselves create. Still, there's much to revel in, particularly since summer is near. So, it's out with the scotch and bourbon, in with the vodka and gin and off to the races (in August).
In past iterations, there were more than 10,000 readers of my blogs and they were all over the world. With any luck, there will be sufficiently interesting things here to bring them all back and then some. It is, after all, the least I can do (a quantity many people specialize in).
Where to begin? Ah, how about the title of this platform? "The Far Away Fella". I like that very much and have been called that by someone dear. I looked into the etymology of the phrase and found that it's an Irish moniker given to one whose mind is, well, shall we say not always where everyone else's may be at a given moment in time. Fintan O'Toole, in a wonderful book called "The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities", wrote:
For Britain, the Irish are the Indians to the far west, circling the wagons of imperial civilisation. Once in America, of course, the Irish cease to be the Indians and become the Cowboys.
I like that. The Irish that first came to these shores never forgot from whence they came and it (Ireland) was always there, in the mind, perhaps not at the front, and not the back, but gently intruding from the periphery. But they went about their business and helped build this country just the same.
Another wonderful book called "The Italians", by Luigi Barzini, describes the same phenomenon occurring among the first Italian immigrants to the U.S. Now, of course, it has evaporated and my generation is perhaps the last that always have some far away image of their other home. And for me, at least, I have always been an American-Italian, not an Italian-American.
The title Far Away Fella was given to me by the mother of a long-ago friend and while she didn't explain it at the time, I didn't forget it and was reminded of it when I heard others given the honor many years later. I'd like to think there's a lot of Far Away Fellas and Far Away Ladies on this planet. People that think of multiple things at the same time, phasing a favorite theme in an out as the mood strikes them. Inspiration often comes that way, you know, fleeting and like a breeze you want to catch in your hand. And like a breeze, more often than not goes away, like what you thought was a great idea, or thought might have been love.
Being Far Away doesn't mean, incidentally, that you're not engaged with the present. Think of it as a form of meditation, or self-hypnosis, by which you're able to lull yourself into a far more pleasant place, or just another place if need be, while you attend to the mundane before your eyes. During those times you can revert to what you would like your future to be, or what you remember fondly of your past. Jefferson said that he liked the dreams of the future more than the memories of the past, and Tom was certainly a Far Away Fella of significance. You can't write like old Tom with both your feet on the ground.
There have been many other Far Aways if you think about it. Lincoln certainly was one, as was Edison, Marie Curie, and Eleanor Roosevelt, too. What those Far Aways were able to do, you see, is make the best of the present by keeping some part of their mind on the future and how they envisioned it to be.
So, look for a number of essays here that will be Far Away. And be grateful if you happen to have a faraway moment or hour. When you come to the end of the day, you may find it was the best time of it.
I've had three of these blog things and ended up taking them down after a while, mainly because I wasn't happy with what I wrote and partly to punish myself for having the unbridled nerve to expose real feeling and emotion, other than anger, which seems to be the prevalent emotion of the 21st century. This time, I anticipate it will be different. A little different, not too much, because there is a great deal to write about and, like Willy Sutton's reason for robbing banks (look it up), it seems perfectly natural for me to do what I enjoy doing. It's fun.
Fun. You remember fun, don't you? Writing for me is fun. There are many things that I believe are fun, some of which others don't believe are thus, but as a rule, those folks don't generally have much fun. They are, as Mrs. Banks sang so memorably (watch the movie), "as a group, rather stupid."
If any of you watch the Sunday talk shows or are glued to C-SPAN, CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, you know what I mean. Everyone is annoyed, everyone is shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, by the behavior of all but themselves and, in general, have a sour outlook on life and what delights there are everywhere you look. I'm no Polyanna (my name is Anthony) and I'm more than a little aware of the collective trouble we're all in; which, parenthetically, we ourselves create. Still, there's much to revel in, particularly since summer is near. So, it's out with the scotch and bourbon, in with the vodka and gin and off to the races (in August).
In past iterations, there were more than 10,000 readers of my blogs and they were all over the world. With any luck, there will be sufficiently interesting things here to bring them all back and then some. It is, after all, the least I can do (a quantity many people specialize in).
Where to begin? Ah, how about the title of this platform? "The Far Away Fella". I like that very much and have been called that by someone dear. I looked into the etymology of the phrase and found that it's an Irish moniker given to one whose mind is, well, shall we say not always where everyone else's may be at a given moment in time. Fintan O'Toole, in a wonderful book called "The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities", wrote:
For Britain, the Irish are the Indians to the far west, circling the wagons of imperial civilisation. Once in America, of course, the Irish cease to be the Indians and become the Cowboys.
I like that. The Irish that first came to these shores never forgot from whence they came and it (Ireland) was always there, in the mind, perhaps not at the front, and not the back, but gently intruding from the periphery. But they went about their business and helped build this country just the same.
Another wonderful book called "The Italians", by Luigi Barzini, describes the same phenomenon occurring among the first Italian immigrants to the U.S. Now, of course, it has evaporated and my generation is perhaps the last that always have some far away image of their other home. And for me, at least, I have always been an American-Italian, not an Italian-American.
The title Far Away Fella was given to me by the mother of a long-ago friend and while she didn't explain it at the time, I didn't forget it and was reminded of it when I heard others given the honor many years later. I'd like to think there's a lot of Far Away Fellas and Far Away Ladies on this planet. People that think of multiple things at the same time, phasing a favorite theme in an out as the mood strikes them. Inspiration often comes that way, you know, fleeting and like a breeze you want to catch in your hand. And like a breeze, more often than not goes away, like what you thought was a great idea, or thought might have been love.
Being Far Away doesn't mean, incidentally, that you're not engaged with the present. Think of it as a form of meditation, or self-hypnosis, by which you're able to lull yourself into a far more pleasant place, or just another place if need be, while you attend to the mundane before your eyes. During those times you can revert to what you would like your future to be, or what you remember fondly of your past. Jefferson said that he liked the dreams of the future more than the memories of the past, and Tom was certainly a Far Away Fella of significance. You can't write like old Tom with both your feet on the ground.
There have been many other Far Aways if you think about it. Lincoln certainly was one, as was Edison, Marie Curie, and Eleanor Roosevelt, too. What those Far Aways were able to do, you see, is make the best of the present by keeping some part of their mind on the future and how they envisioned it to be.
So, look for a number of essays here that will be Far Away. And be grateful if you happen to have a faraway moment or hour. When you come to the end of the day, you may find it was the best time of it.
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