The Birds April 8, 2009
Posted by Mark Folse in 504, cryptic envelopment, music, New Orleans, NOLA, Toulouse Street.Tags: Black Crowes, corvus, crows, Odein, Odin, Raven
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Here on Toulouse Street we’ve had crows on our mind this past week. It began a week ago after making a remark online about maybe seeing a raven last Wednesday (from Wodin or Odin’s Day), and as I snapped pictures of the Green Man mural in the Marigny from out of the birdless sky came two crows to circle overhead and watch me. Of course Odin was served by two Corvus, Huginn and Muninn, which were his agents in the world of mortals.
Okay then, not that we’re particularly superstitious but heh (knock wood) we thought that a bit Odd. Odin in his earliest (and less bloodthirsty) aspect was associated with poetry (a plus here on Toulouse Street) and madness (including the form of madness the Celts called awen, the possession of the muse), so I have to admit to a certain, well, fondness is not quite the right word, let’s say affinity to old One Eyed Jack as Lord of Poets.
As to Odin’s warrior aspect, I’ve been intermittently re-reading Carlos Castaneda not so much for the wild mushrooming tips as for what struck me the last time I did a post 70s spin through his work: the sage advice from the later books. The concept of a brujo as a fearless warrior, and one who’s conduct is impeccable, has also been on our mind so that’s another chalk mark up on the plus side for Odin.
As to the mad side of “poetry and madness” here on Toulouse we tend toward the simply Odd, but will confess to a certain attraction that draws us occasionally to the brink of madness, to peer over the precipice and admire the twisted vista, tossing the Odd pebble over the edge to listen to it skitter into the abyss.
So for One Eye’d Jack and raven-friends everywhere here is something from the Black Crowes (natch), a song that is itself a postcard from the needle-sharp heroin edge of madness. We like it for the elegant lyric and swinging southern blues-rock sound of the Crowes, and for the birds they represent and other sundry reasonS. And so may it please you and Old One Eye’d Jack: She Talks to Angels.
or at these independent New Orleans bookstores:
I see your Birds…
and raise you The Deadly Bees!
Editilla
My very personal experience with madness, not my own but real nonetheless, has not been so romantic, or noble. No, the madness I have known too closely is more mundane, completely lacking self-awareness as a primary symptom thereof, and far more frightening, dangerous, real. You may peer at it from the edge, just as I peer at the notion of the “nervous breakdown” and the relief therein, both of us knowing we will never cross those respective lines, because we know, and crossing those lines means not knowing.
Agreed. I should not be so entirely flip. There is the madness of the awen, and then there is mental illness which can be horrible if left to run its course. And our streets here are full of the mad. Perhaps we don’t notice them as much as we would on a corner in Cincinnati because everyone down here, where you pass the liquor on the way out from getting your mends, is such a mess.
You weren’t flip. You were eloquent, as always, just caught me at a bad moment. I’m not sure I know the difference between madness and mental illness. What I know and fear is the mad / mentally ill who think they’re just fine and hide their batshit crazy well, most especially when it’s underpinned with instinctive negativity, finding pleasure in others’ pain. Honestly, joyous madness seems more relief than anything else, at least to me, right now. I guess the trick comes in balancing at that liberating state of glorious mess, well past inhibited but not quite mad… as you said, now that I think about it.