BETH HART IN NASHVILLE

March 18, 2017 / Benn Bell / 9 Comments

At the Ryman Auditorium

Beth Hart killed last night (3/10/2017) in Nashville at the storied Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. Killed in the sense she slaughtered her material and slayed her audience. I have never seen a performer so committed to her material as Beth Hart. She has a power and a force that will blow you away! She simply gave it all she had. She is one of the best blues singers I have ever heard and she just keeps on getting better.

Beth looked great in a sparkly mini dress and high heel shoes which showed off her toned legs to great effect. She wore sheer nylon stockings with seams down the back. How sexy was that? She must be eating right because her tiny waist, beautiful skin tones, and irrepressible energy were much on display.

And the music! She has a great band around her including her guitar player who has been with her for 17 years. Beth writes a lot of her own material and there is as story behind each song which she generously shares with the audience before she delivers the goods. The audience loves Beth and she loves them back!

When she performed the song California, which is a paean to the one she loves, who should appear from behind the black curtain but her husband, who rushes up behind her and hugs her close and kisses her neck and we are swept up in the moment of an emotional highlight.

Throughout the show and on numerous occasions I was moved to the point of tears and the goose flesh was in motion.

She will be appearing in at the Louisville Palace in Louisville, Kentucky on March 19 as part of the Jimi Hendrix experience. I’ll be there.

I Feel Bad About My Leg

March 9, 2017 / Benn Bell / 7 Comments

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

When I was in South Florida recently I injured my right leg. I don’t know how exactly, I just know I got up early one morning and I could barely walk. With every step I felt an excruciating pain in my right knee. It slowed me down for sure. Stairs were out, which meant I couldn’t get down the staircase to walk Gideon the Dog, a little white Shi Tzu with a boatload of energy. I took to wearing a knee brace which seemed to help. I hoped my leg would heal in a few days if I stayed off it and I would get back to normal again. I am a pretty active guy.

Gideon, the Dog

It did get some better for which I was grateful, because I had to travel back to Kentucky in a few days and there would be a lot of walking and schlepping of suitcases and bags. But as luck would have it, on the day of travel, I aggravated the injury to my leg as I stepped up onto the train platform. Ughhh!

Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgefulness

I had to take a train from Delray Beach to Ft. Lauderdale, a bus from the train station to the airport, then upstairs to the ticket counter to check in. I was carrying a backpack, a suitcase, and a small carry-on item. I checked the suitcase at the ticket counter and stumbled through security with the other two bags. It was more like a shuffle than a stumble but I managed to get through. There was more security than usual due the fact that there was a mass shooting at this airport just a few days earlier. Guy took a gun out of a packed suitcase in the baggage claim area and started shooting people. This would be your worst nightmare. He ended up killing five people.

I sat a moment in one of the ubiquitous lounges that lined the terminal and had a cheeseburger and a beer. Pretty good. So far so good. When the appointed time came I made the queue and boarded the aircraft. It was short flight to Atlanta but sitting on the tarmac and waiting to take off, then the time in the air didn’t do my leg any good. I was pretty stiff when I got off the plane and not just from the drinks.

I had to change planes for the final leg of my journey back to Louisville. I arrived at Terminal 1 and had to make my way to Terminal 2. Thankfully there as an escalator, a moving sidewalk, and a train to take me to my destination. Then I had to walk the distance to gate 32, which of course was the furthermost gate away.

It was 7:30 at night when I finally got home. Had been traveling all day. All the sitting made my condition worse. By the time my daughter picked me up I could barely walk again. Once home I fell into bed exhausted. Weary, but glad to be home.

I continued to wear the knee brace and took it as easy as I could and gradually my leg began to heal. I was pretty worried actually, losing one’s mobility is a pretty frightening prospect. All this time I was thinking well this is it, this is how it’s going to end…I will lose my mobility and my life will change forever…

I got a little depressed while convalescing. I picked up a book I had recently purchased by one of my favorite authors, J. M. Coetzee’s , the novel Slow Man, and began to read. Turns out his protagonist, Paul Rayment, an older gentleman much like myself, as a matter of fact the same exact age, sustains a knee injury in a bicycle accident in the very first chapter in the novel. Only his injury was much worse than mine. He lost his leg just above the knee. Ironically, the things he thought about were the very same things I thought about. Here is what he had to say about it.

“A circumscribed life. What would Socrates say about that? May a life become so circumscribed that it is no longer worth living? Unstrung. That is the word that comes to him from Homer. The spear shatters the breast bone, blood spurts, the limbs are unstrung, the body topples like a wooden puppet. Well, his limbs have been unstrung, and now his spirit is unstrung too. His spirit is ready to topple.”

My spirit was ready to topple too. But, as previously stated, I got steady better and now I am back to nearly normal. I don’t know what I would do if I were to permanently lose my mobility and my being became so circumscribed. It might not be a life so worth living.

DESIRE

March 4, 2017 / Benn Bell / Leave a comment

You take a streetcar named Desire

and transfer to one called Cemeteries, and ride six blocks to the end of the line and get off at Elysian Fields!

Give Me Liberty!

February 3, 2017 / Benn Bell / 2 Comments

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

The Bamboo

January 31, 2017 / Benn Bell / 4 Comments

The Bamboo planted

on the bank of the river

calms my restless soul.

PAJAMA GAME

December 1, 2016December 1, 2016 / Benn Bell / 4 Comments

Top Ten Reasons Not to Wear Pajamas Out in Public

Man in his pajama at China Star in Louisville, Kentucky

It’s Public!
If you are sleepy get a room!
It looks awful.
No one will take you seriously.
I can’t stop laughing.
Nobody cares what you wear to bed.
It’s just a little too comfortable for you.
It’s just a little bit too uncomfortable for me.
No one want s to see those little black moose (meece?) run up your red fuzzy leg.
Too late I’ve already been incensed!

INTO THE UNDERGROWTH

November 25, 2016 / Benn Bell / 6 Comments

I recently attended an exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum entitled Van Gogh: Into the Undergrowth. Turns out there is a whole sub-genre of painting called sous-bois, which means undergrowth, that explores the significance of the interior of the forest. Hmmm. I have been exploring the interior of the forest for years now. Here is my latest entry into this genre.

UNDERGROUND

October 20, 2016 / Benn Bell / 8 Comments

I recently visited London and Paris. I had long dreamed of vising these places as they have lived in my imagination for years from reading books. Using the subway systems of Philadelphia and New York City, primed me for the London Underground and the Parisian Metro system.

On one of my many excursions around London, I descended the steps into the underground, and encountered a smiling, red-faced uniformed attendant.

“Hello!” I said.

“Hello!” he returned.

I inquired about the best route to get to my destination.

“Take the Circle Line to Baker Street, transfer to the Jubilee Line. Get off at Southwark and it is only a short walk to the Globe.”

“Thank you!”

“Cheers!”

This was typical of my experience in the London Underground— easy to navigate with friendly attendants and patrons who were willing to answer your questions.

In Paris, perhaps the incongruity of being in a strange land made my existence there somehow congruent. I felt at home at last. Once I arrived in Paris, I approached a Parisian Metro booth and spoke to one of the attendants.

“Parlez-vous anglais?”

“Un peu.”

Although I did not speak the language, I was able to communicate well enough to find my way, with a few words and hand gestures.

On one of my last days in the city, I was sitting outside, having a glass of red wine at the Café de Flore on Boulevard Saint Germaine. A Frenchman who took the table next to mine, lit up a cigar and then glanced in my direction to ask if I was offended by the cigar smoke.

“Oh, no,” I said, “I understand that people who sit outside often smoke and I am not offended.”

He nodded and smiled. He took a couple of puffs off his cigar and we began talking, he in perfect English. We talked for a long time about a wide range of events including the recent terrorist attacks. I mentioned the increased security around the metro. He shared that he had just talked to his daughter who lives in the neighbourhood where the attacks occurred and she felt safe using the Metro System.

“Yes,” he cautioned, “but the police and soldiers cannot be everywhere. You have to be vigilant. In effect, we have to be responsible for our own security.”

As we were sitting there, we watched many police vehicles driving by with their sirens blaring.

“Something’s going on,” he said.

Then he pointed out that if a car were to pull up in front of us right now and gunmen got out and started shooting, what could we do about it? Nothing! He was right of course. So I concluded that the French are a little fatalistic about such things.

C’est la vie?

I travelled to London and Paris by myself because I needed to be alone. I needed time to think about my life and my absurd existence with only myself for company as I walked the cobblestone streets of Montmartre. The encounters that I did have gave me reason to believe in the possibility of happiness and the hope for humanity. I found in both London and Paris, a big smile and a hello or bonjour broke down the normal barriers humans seem to erect between themselves. You can be anonymous, but by using the universal language of a smile followed by a greeting you can still be touched by the human heart.

THIRD STREET DIVE BAR

October 18, 2016 / Benn Bell / Leave a comment

Third Street Dive Bar is located in the heart of beautiful downtown Louisville, Kentucky. Kentucky, as we know from previous entries, is the land of beautiful horses and fast women. But if you are fast enough, you can catch them! Louisville is full of dive bars and all manner of other drinking establishments. It is also known, as of late, for its bourbon tours. Tonight I visited the Third Street Dive Bar for the very first time. I wasn’t disappointed. It is a music venue but it was early when we arrived so no band was playing at the time.

My friend Dan and I sidled up to the bar and ordered drinks. The prices were right and they had plenty of specials. Don’t go with the well bourbon, though, because it is worse than rot gut. I switched to Beam and that was much better. I like my bourbon on the rocks with a splash of branch water. If you don’t have any branches any kind of water will do. But please, just a splash.

There were a couple of ladies at the bar to our left and of course Dan had to chat them up. He tried to talk them into joining us at another bar down the street about six minutes away. They demurred. It was just as well as they were both married and from Toledo and I don’t know what’s worse. They were here on convention and staying at the Hyatt.

I loved the decor of the Third Street Dive Bar. There was plenty of neon signs and graffiti on the walls, especially in the bathrooms. The back room had a pool table with a red velvet top that looked rather inviting.

We finished our drinks and went down to Meta. Meta is a cool hipster bar with a story all its own. We had a few drinks and struck up some conversation with some of the local hipsters then came on back to Third Street. By the time we got back a band was playing and another one was setting up. The place was starting to fill up with some pretty wild looking characters. So far so good. My friend Dan is a blues guitarist and singer. He talked a member of the band into letting him play with them. Dan did a rousing version of Jimmy Hendrix’s Along the Watch Tower. The crowd loved it!

We left shortly after that. All in all had a pretty good time.

Third Street Dive Bar, 442 South 3rd, Louisville, Kentucky

CLOWN SIGHTINGS

October 9, 2016 / Benn Bell / Leave a comment

dscn2348 Jokers to the right of me, clowns to the left. You know there have been a lot of clown sightings lately. Did anyone stop and think that this might because we are in the Halloween Season, the October Country, and the Silly Season? You know why cannibals won’t eat clowns? Taste funny….just saying.

Ghost Dog

Notes From the Underground

Travel