I am not a typical Deadhead here. I mostly just think about how much fun I had, not how good the band was playing. I have never been particularly interested in cataloging or re-listening to the 50 or so shows I saw (of the Jerry GD) or in ranking the shows like lots of heads, nerds, and tape collectors. In fact, some of my favorite shows were some of the first ones, at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in 1984, when the band was definitely not at their peak! But those were the shows that I discovered the deep dancers, the dancers who don't care about being able to see the stage, and I sought out that whirlpool with its changing but strangely recurring cast of marvelous and gorgeous characters at every show I could, and the ones I remember and loved the most was where I found em again. Even at the Fare Thee Well show in Santa Clara in 2015, a fun but hardly exceptional musical event in a garish stadium, I found 'em, almost like a dance jam out of time, and it was divine.
I occasionally used to hear the title lyric as "wake up to find out that you are the SIZE of the world". But I decided that was beyond meta. Too much hallucinating.
I think it is quite obvious from the whole rhetoric of the piece, which includes many such acknowledgements, that this is an interpretation. A "reading" as we say in the study of literature, which is always a mystery--a mystery to the writer as well. Does Hunter know what he means? Who is "Hunter" if his eyes are the eyes of the world?. Everything we write is an interpretation, particularly about art and poetry, but to constantly repeat, in the midst of an obvious "reading," "What I am about to say is my own interpretation" is tedious. Most critics and scholars I know are far more forceful and declarative than me. But thats the nice thing about Substack Rhoney: you can always unsubscribe!
I really appreciated that post. I actually choked up at the line about the many dancers who've been reeled in from the brink by 'if you get confused, listen to the music play'. I just wanted to share a memory of 'one of those flashes' I had at a Dead show in Eugene, '92 I believe. In the middle of 'Eyes' I was looking out across the colorful sea of humanity to the other side of Autzen Stadium, deeply appreciating all the beautiful people and the interesting ways they were moving to the music. When Jerry launched into 'Wake up to find out...' I got extremely self-conscious about looking at the crowd instead of at the band.
Then it occurred to me that plenty of people were doing the same thing and that was a big part of what made a Dead show so interesting. The flash of awakening to the moment of seeing and being seen by my fellow Deadheads was life affirming, for sure.
I love how you link the lyrics to what is for me one of the great experiences of Dead shows: looking in other people's eyes, especially other dancer's eyes. In fact, one of my big early initiations at a Dead show took place behind the sound tower, where you literally couldn't see the band. The only people who were there were the people who wanted to dance in relationship with one another, wild magical high bar dancing, and it was totally eye contact improv.
where are you getting your information and what are your credentials, Eric Davis? How dare you say you speak for Hunter as when you say, "For Hunter, when we truly see..." How do you know what Hunter thinks or sees. This is YOUR INTERPRETATION !
I think it is quite obvious from the whole rhetoric of the piece, which includes many such acknowledgements, that this is an interpretation. A "reading" as we say in the study of literature, which is always a mystery--a mystery to the writer as well. Does Hunter know what he means? Who is "Hunter" if his eyes are the eyes of the world?. Everything we write is an interpretation, particularly about art and poetry, but to constantly repeat, in the midst of an obvious "reading," "What I am about to say is my own interpretation" is tedious. Most critics and scholars I know are far more forceful and declarative than me. But thats the nice thing about Substack Rhoney: you can always unsubscribe!
or ERIK, "it's all a dream we dreamed one afternoon so long ago..." I am sorry you were not there for our shared dreaming; however, DO NOT DISTORT WHAT WE, ON THE GROUND, WITNESSED, AS WE WERE THERE!
What a strange response. As a former English major at UC Berkeley, I understand analysis but generally, the proper protocol is to indicate that it is the writer's personal belief, and not say, "Hunter believes, Hunter means, Hunter thinks..." but to say, "MY interpretation.." "I believe."My reading... my sense of his philosophy..." Use synonyms if "my own interpretation" as a phrase is tedious to you. After all you are a writer!
Also, please acknowledge that it is your assumption that Hunter did not know what he means. He may very well know what he means!
Check out the Manual of Style! This was the "bible" to all English literature majors!
And thank you for your recommendation about Substack. Of course, I can unsubscribe, or stop reading, which I did!
Rhoney Stanley DDS MPH
Author with Tom Davis: Owsley and Me: My LSD Family
You asked about my credentials, and mention your literature studies as an undergraduate at UC, a training which has authorized you to offer me some sharp advice on the protocols of the critical essay.
As readers, credentials can make a difference in terms of our willingness to trust a critic or thinker as they take us somewhere we resist or don't know about. I mean, maybe you would have cut me more slack if, like, I had graduated from Yale magna cum laude with a degree in English and a concentration on lyric poetry? Or if I had gotten a PhD in Religious Studies with a dissertation about California counterculture and psychedelic spirituality that was published by a solid academic press? Or maybe if I had been writing and publishing books and critical essays on literature, music, drugs, and spirituality for thirty years, in texts that have been widely anthologized and translated into a dozen languages?
Oh wait! I DID do all those things. Still no slack. Something tells me that credentials aren’t gonna cut it with you.
I guess I had to "be there"? I am genuinely moved by your pity about my missing the party, it is a tragedy, but I have had a good time nonetheless and that’s not the point. That’s not what authorizes us to speak. I am not "distorting" anything by offering a reading of a song and a lyric in the context of a resonance with Tibetan Buddhism, whether or not I was there. I don’t even see WHAT I am supposedly distorting about that long-ago afternoon.
Confused by all this, I decided to take my credentialed analytic skills and return to my own essay, which I reread multiple times with your critiques and high-handed demands in mind. My only conclusion is that we must have read different pieces, or that you are a terrible reader of essays.
Throughout the piece I offer precisely the sort of qualifications you demand of me. You want an indication that what I am offering is an "INTERPRETATION," and I do. When I discuss Hunter’s lyrics directly, I say that the lyrics “suggest” something rather than “mean” something; or I note that a lyric “can be read as” something. When I consider the possibility that “Eyes” might be based on a psychedelic trip, I say “maybe”, and later I qualify a further elaboration with “I suspect.”
Later I say more directly that “Hunter’s lyric dodges this transcendental trap” but that is a claim about the lyric, not what Hunter thought or experienced. You might disagree with me here about my reading, and then we can have an argument about the lyric, which I am confident I would win, but I am not claiming to divine Hunter’s soul. When I limn Emerson’s eyeball in “Eyes of the World,” I say that Emerson’s essay “may” lie behind the lyric. I also let Hunter speak by quoting good chunks of his conversation with Gans, and refer to that conversation. This all looks pretty careful to me!
There is one place where I do not offer qualifications, and it is appropriately the peak of the essay, where, if I have persuaded the reader so far—clearly not the case with Rhoney Stanley, BA!—I can afford to make a more direct claim:
“For Hunter, when we truly see, we are none of those.”
If that’s what you want me to acknowledge, mea fuggin culpa!
As for your accusation that I suggested that Hunter “did not know what he means,” I cannot for the life of me find anything I write that suggests this. Again I don’t think you read the same piece I wrote. Or maybe you confused Hunter’s own criticisms of his own song from the Gans interview with me here.
Other than that, I just have no idea what you are talking about although I am struck by your idea that Hunter the writer was the master of all the meanings of his famously enigmatic and suggestive lyrics. I thought his job was to shed light—the light that enters us through words and sounds and hits us all individually, directly—and not to master.
That's a great anecdote Erik. Thanks again for the fascinating post. I hadn't heard the version of Eyes you put a link to and after a minute of listening I decided to buy that copy of Dick's Picks. I'm looking forward to listening to the Deadcast episode you mentioned as well.
I have always associated Eyes with Rilke’s poetry. Hunter was a big fan and in fact translated the Duino Eligies. I remember reading about this when I was an undergraduate in the early seventies. I got a copy out of the library but I could not fathom the work. The Joanna Macy translation is much more accessible. Other philosophers and poets talk about Rilke’s view that we are here to name things and to “see” the world. I wonder how much Hunter was influenced by Rilke.
Influence is always hard to measure but there are a number of almost atmospheric links: a sense for the sacred in the secular, in the body, in beautiful things, a kind of unchurched spirituality that's also wrapped up in marvelous poetic obscurities. I also like Stephen Mitchell's translations. Had a good university education but then went all Zen, and has translated a lot of sacred stuff. Who knows, maybe he met Hunter?
I neglected to include a link for the PKD course, which will begin on Jan 23, in person but also online. For more info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-three-stigmata-of-philip-k-dick-tickets-784560059257?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
this is the vintage edition you're working from, correct? https://rb.gy/nzxmvm
I am not a typical Deadhead here. I mostly just think about how much fun I had, not how good the band was playing. I have never been particularly interested in cataloging or re-listening to the 50 or so shows I saw (of the Jerry GD) or in ranking the shows like lots of heads, nerds, and tape collectors. In fact, some of my favorite shows were some of the first ones, at the Ventura County Fairgrounds in 1984, when the band was definitely not at their peak! But those were the shows that I discovered the deep dancers, the dancers who don't care about being able to see the stage, and I sought out that whirlpool with its changing but strangely recurring cast of marvelous and gorgeous characters at every show I could, and the ones I remember and loved the most was where I found em again. Even at the Fare Thee Well show in Santa Clara in 2015, a fun but hardly exceptional musical event in a garish stadium, I found 'em, almost like a dance jam out of time, and it was divine.
I occasionally used to hear the title lyric as "wake up to find out that you are the SIZE of the world". But I decided that was beyond meta. Too much hallucinating.
Excellent, as always~
Accompanied by one of my all-time favorite Eyes. Super choice.
I think it is quite obvious from the whole rhetoric of the piece, which includes many such acknowledgements, that this is an interpretation. A "reading" as we say in the study of literature, which is always a mystery--a mystery to the writer as well. Does Hunter know what he means? Who is "Hunter" if his eyes are the eyes of the world?. Everything we write is an interpretation, particularly about art and poetry, but to constantly repeat, in the midst of an obvious "reading," "What I am about to say is my own interpretation" is tedious. Most critics and scholars I know are far more forceful and declarative than me. But thats the nice thing about Substack Rhoney: you can always unsubscribe!
Yes indeed!
I really appreciated that post. I actually choked up at the line about the many dancers who've been reeled in from the brink by 'if you get confused, listen to the music play'. I just wanted to share a memory of 'one of those flashes' I had at a Dead show in Eugene, '92 I believe. In the middle of 'Eyes' I was looking out across the colorful sea of humanity to the other side of Autzen Stadium, deeply appreciating all the beautiful people and the interesting ways they were moving to the music. When Jerry launched into 'Wake up to find out...' I got extremely self-conscious about looking at the crowd instead of at the band.
Then it occurred to me that plenty of people were doing the same thing and that was a big part of what made a Dead show so interesting. The flash of awakening to the moment of seeing and being seen by my fellow Deadheads was life affirming, for sure.
I love how you link the lyrics to what is for me one of the great experiences of Dead shows: looking in other people's eyes, especially other dancer's eyes. In fact, one of my big early initiations at a Dead show took place behind the sound tower, where you literally couldn't see the band. The only people who were there were the people who wanted to dance in relationship with one another, wild magical high bar dancing, and it was totally eye contact improv.
where are you getting your information and what are your credentials, Eric Davis? How dare you say you speak for Hunter as when you say, "For Hunter, when we truly see..." How do you know what Hunter thinks or sees. This is YOUR INTERPRETATION !
author
Erik Davis
14 mins ago
Author
I think it is quite obvious from the whole rhetoric of the piece, which includes many such acknowledgements, that this is an interpretation. A "reading" as we say in the study of literature, which is always a mystery--a mystery to the writer as well. Does Hunter know what he means? Who is "Hunter" if his eyes are the eyes of the world?. Everything we write is an interpretation, particularly about art and poetry, but to constantly repeat, in the midst of an obvious "reading," "What I am about to say is my own interpretation" is tedious. Most critics and scholars I know are far more forceful and declarative than me. But thats the nice thing about Substack Rhoney: you can always unsubscribe!
or ERIK, "it's all a dream we dreamed one afternoon so long ago..." I am sorry you were not there for our shared dreaming; however, DO NOT DISTORT WHAT WE, ON THE GROUND, WITNESSED, AS WE WERE THERE!
Thanks, Erik, for getting back to me.
What a strange response. As a former English major at UC Berkeley, I understand analysis but generally, the proper protocol is to indicate that it is the writer's personal belief, and not say, "Hunter believes, Hunter means, Hunter thinks..." but to say, "MY interpretation.." "I believe."My reading... my sense of his philosophy..." Use synonyms if "my own interpretation" as a phrase is tedious to you. After all you are a writer!
Also, please acknowledge that it is your assumption that Hunter did not know what he means. He may very well know what he means!
Check out the Manual of Style! This was the "bible" to all English literature majors!
And thank you for your recommendation about Substack. Of course, I can unsubscribe, or stop reading, which I did!
Rhoney Stanley DDS MPH
Author with Tom Davis: Owsley and Me: My LSD Family
An even curiouser response!
You asked about my credentials, and mention your literature studies as an undergraduate at UC, a training which has authorized you to offer me some sharp advice on the protocols of the critical essay.
As readers, credentials can make a difference in terms of our willingness to trust a critic or thinker as they take us somewhere we resist or don't know about. I mean, maybe you would have cut me more slack if, like, I had graduated from Yale magna cum laude with a degree in English and a concentration on lyric poetry? Or if I had gotten a PhD in Religious Studies with a dissertation about California counterculture and psychedelic spirituality that was published by a solid academic press? Or maybe if I had been writing and publishing books and critical essays on literature, music, drugs, and spirituality for thirty years, in texts that have been widely anthologized and translated into a dozen languages?
Oh wait! I DID do all those things. Still no slack. Something tells me that credentials aren’t gonna cut it with you.
I guess I had to "be there"? I am genuinely moved by your pity about my missing the party, it is a tragedy, but I have had a good time nonetheless and that’s not the point. That’s not what authorizes us to speak. I am not "distorting" anything by offering a reading of a song and a lyric in the context of a resonance with Tibetan Buddhism, whether or not I was there. I don’t even see WHAT I am supposedly distorting about that long-ago afternoon.
Confused by all this, I decided to take my credentialed analytic skills and return to my own essay, which I reread multiple times with your critiques and high-handed demands in mind. My only conclusion is that we must have read different pieces, or that you are a terrible reader of essays.
Throughout the piece I offer precisely the sort of qualifications you demand of me. You want an indication that what I am offering is an "INTERPRETATION," and I do. When I discuss Hunter’s lyrics directly, I say that the lyrics “suggest” something rather than “mean” something; or I note that a lyric “can be read as” something. When I consider the possibility that “Eyes” might be based on a psychedelic trip, I say “maybe”, and later I qualify a further elaboration with “I suspect.”
Later I say more directly that “Hunter’s lyric dodges this transcendental trap” but that is a claim about the lyric, not what Hunter thought or experienced. You might disagree with me here about my reading, and then we can have an argument about the lyric, which I am confident I would win, but I am not claiming to divine Hunter’s soul. When I limn Emerson’s eyeball in “Eyes of the World,” I say that Emerson’s essay “may” lie behind the lyric. I also let Hunter speak by quoting good chunks of his conversation with Gans, and refer to that conversation. This all looks pretty careful to me!
There is one place where I do not offer qualifications, and it is appropriately the peak of the essay, where, if I have persuaded the reader so far—clearly not the case with Rhoney Stanley, BA!—I can afford to make a more direct claim:
“For Hunter, when we truly see, we are none of those.”
If that’s what you want me to acknowledge, mea fuggin culpa!
As for your accusation that I suggested that Hunter “did not know what he means,” I cannot for the life of me find anything I write that suggests this. Again I don’t think you read the same piece I wrote. Or maybe you confused Hunter’s own criticisms of his own song from the Gans interview with me here.
Other than that, I just have no idea what you are talking about although I am struck by your idea that Hunter the writer was the master of all the meanings of his famously enigmatic and suggestive lyrics. I thought his job was to shed light—the light that enters us through words and sounds and hits us all individually, directly—and not to master.
"Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own"
That's a great anecdote Erik. Thanks again for the fascinating post. I hadn't heard the version of Eyes you put a link to and after a minute of listening I decided to buy that copy of Dick's Picks. I'm looking forward to listening to the Deadcast episode you mentioned as well.
You're doing great work sir!!
Thanks Morgan, there are so many good versions of that tune, I think they did it like 300 times...
Do you possibly have a favorite Dead show that you went to?
I have always associated Eyes with Rilke’s poetry. Hunter was a big fan and in fact translated the Duino Eligies. I remember reading about this when I was an undergraduate in the early seventies. I got a copy out of the library but I could not fathom the work. The Joanna Macy translation is much more accessible. Other philosophers and poets talk about Rilke’s view that we are here to name things and to “see” the world. I wonder how much Hunter was influenced by Rilke.
Influence is always hard to measure but there are a number of almost atmospheric links: a sense for the sacred in the secular, in the body, in beautiful things, a kind of unchurched spirituality that's also wrapped up in marvelous poetic obscurities. I also like Stephen Mitchell's translations. Had a good university education but then went all Zen, and has translated a lot of sacred stuff. Who knows, maybe he met Hunter?
Do you have a link to the PKD course?
I neglected to include a link for the PKD course, which will begin on Jan 23, in person but also online. For more info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-three-stigmata-of-philip-k-dick-tickets-784560059257?aff=ebdsoporgprofile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfCOu8xIh14