Hodgepodge

You can find song (L) on album (R)

Oleo is a margarine and Olio is a hodgepodge and Olio is a spiced stew and Oleo is a Sonny Rollins tune. That's right: I'm talking about Sonny. Not your Sonny and not my Sonny but Amtrak's Sonny, because Amtrak was playing Sonny -- and not any of that "smooth jazz" -- but Sonny, in Baltimore, eighty-two degrees in late October. And you know it's got to be Sonny if Amtrak's playing it because Amtrak doesn't fool around when it comes to Sonny. I mean, I've seen Amtrak fool around and it ain't pretty: Conductors. Ain't nothing scarier than a Conductor coming at you with a hole-punch. Come to think of it, ain't nothing scarier than a hole-punch, with or without a Conductor. Once upon a time it was a Conductor who cauliflowered my house. That is, he threw a cauliflower at my house in the middle of the night, thump!, then sped off in his Amtrak. What did I do? Washed it off and served it up! Or the time someone threw a Hebrew National Salami at a University of Michigan game, he threw it at the whole game! It hit me in the chest, and after paramedics, like, restarted my heart, I pocketed that salami and served it up. Remember: There are many things best done later -- serving up a Stadium-thrown salami included.

We are in Times of Stress, folks, and we may well see a return to people plundering much Booty. The zebra has lain down with the horse, after all, and the offspring, a Zorse, has lain down with the mule, and that offspring, a Morse, has lain down with the nighthawk, and that offspring, the Norse, has plundered much Booty, if you've read the Battle of Malden, and other Anglo Saxon texts, and not always because of brawn, rather, due to some dumb-ass king who painted himself blue, or at least his forebears did. "You may cross our isthmus," he said, and lo, cameth the Norse. Some of us may see winds today and some of us may see red skies and some of us may catch our favorite TV reality shows: Extreme Loss of Palling Around; Extreme Subpar Politician; Extreme Smiting by My God and Not Yours; Extreme IQ Disparity; and Extreme Weapons Amnesty. What should I make of a church bell that chimes at 10 past noon? Is there significance to a church bell chiming at ten past noon? I mean, if we allow bells to chime at 10 past noon, why not 18 past the hour or 23 before the hour or six before the hour? You can see, maybe, one or two of my cards: Order and/or disorder within structure and the comings and goings thereof. Stay tuned, please.

There are some Sonny sheet musics above. (Plural, I always say, where possible.) Note that "A" has some order and "B" does not. What comes third is a repetition, in the sense that there is a bitteen of order, yet, at the same time, it's not exactly the same as "A" -- therefore, Repetition and Change. Gerry Mulligan said, in Jazz Casual, that you can't have freedom without structure. Now I'm not gonna take a stance on that, one way or the other, but you should, perhaps, take a stance on that. The page is a field: We've all heard that one before. But the field is, thus, in charge, the whole of the field, that is. You can argue that the Universe is endless -- but you writing a poem or liking a song or plundering some Booty would, therefore, be structure within freedom. The spoon either right side up or backwards and your image either flipped or elongated -- structure within structure. Is there freedom within freedom? That, my friends, would require a lot of marijuana. Possibly an armed revolt, as well. But wait a minute, let's concentrate on structure: Would Endlessness qualify? Would idea? Would something like "consent" or "betrayal" or "fantasy" qualify as structure? The following applies to You: What kind of mender would you like to be? What kind of mender? What kind would you like to be?