Tesla's folly: or, the day the ship disappeared

These photos (or this photo - the top one is a blowup of the circled figure in the bottom one) go around and around on the internet, and keep appearing on those Top-Ten-Incredible-Time-Travel-Photos-That-Will-Absolutely-Blow-Your-Mind type of things. They pop up on Facebook all the time, and even on YouTube, where Top Ten lists have taken over and spread like a cancer.

This one has been around for a while. It certainly does look odd. This is a group of people - spectators, it looks like, but of what I don't know. Something that's about to happen. They're all sitting on the side of a mountain, and way off to the side is this guy. He really doesn't look like the rest of them, with his board shorts, sloppy tshirt and shaggy hair. In fact, he has been nicknamed Surfer Dude. Historians place this photo around 1917, fully a hundred years ago.

Could be photoshopping, in which case it's awfully well done. But consider this:

This guy has been called Hipster Dude, and like Surfer Dude he sure does seem out of place. The photo is from the 1940s, and everybody has hats on. But this guy has shades, longer hair than anyone else, a tshirt with some sort of logo on it, and what might even be a hoodie. The camera in his hands doesn't look like the hulking things everyone else is carrying.

Somebody claims that this is another view of the guy's head, but who's to say? I can't tell from here.

And here's a gif I made from some Edwardian-era film footage. Just keep your eye on the guy in the long dark coat, sauntering along beside the wagon, bareheaded, pulling his left hand out of his pocket.  Look at the people who are walking behind him (the stiff woman all in black, the stiff couple behind her), the way they're dressed, and compare it to him. The Sauntering Dude (for that's what I call him) might be someone you'd see walking down the street today, whereas those others belong in a museum. Hatted, corsetted, and all the things you had to be back then. Sauntering Dude might even have his coat slung over his right shoulder, which would be almost unthinkably casual back then. Just going bareheaded was mighty strange. I wish I knew more about this guy, because he truly does not seem to be in the right time or place.

I have to admit that some of these things "proving" time travel don't hold up very well. This guy looks like Nic Cage, but when you think about it, probably a lot of people do. There are those who make a living as lookalikes. That Obama guy - who must be out of work by now - looked more like Obama than Obama. Doppelgangers aren't really such a rare thing.

Here, look at this guy, whatever-his-name-is. Pretty close match.

And here we have Ellen DeGeneres and Henry David Thoreau.

I've seen a number of these things where someone is holding a "cell phone" back in 1939 or something - and it's true, there is something odd going on, but since when were there cell phone towers then? So even if the person DID have a cell. . . or did their phone somehow mysteriously receive signals from the future? This is just getting too mixed up, somehow.

Yes, I guess this DOES look sort of like John Travolta, but so what?

I like this ad, don't know when or where it was placed, and most of all I wonder who answered it, and what happened. The "after we get back" is optimistic, I think. I always thought that about moon landings, too. It is nothing short of a miracle that the astronauts never got stranded up there. (Bill tells me they were all given a cyanide capsule "in case").

This doesn't prove anything. About anything.  I don't know if this is from the Zapruder film or what, but there's a big red arrow pointing to "someone". Maybe, like Woody Allen's Zelig, it's somebody who just keeps a-poppin' up everywhere. 

This sort of thing is just silly. Rembrandt was into iphones? I think the internet is reaching here.

What really got me going on this subject was a little story that made my stomach drop, for some reason. During World War II, the U. S. Navy was experimenting with cloaking ships so that they would not appear on enemy radar - rendering them, in a sense, invisible. The Philadelphia Experiment has been much written-about and generally discredited as a hoax or science fiction, but. . . but. It's a story that will never quite go away.

This story claims the experiment was successful and that the ship became invisible, then - bizarrely - showed up in a location hundreds of miles away before disappearing again and reappearing. During this ghost-ship phase, the vessel had a sort of form, but not a solid one, and the men were terrified to find they could walk through walls. When the ship re-materialized in its original location, all the men had gone completely mad. Some of them were literally fused together with the walls they were walking through. Is my hair standing on end yet?

So what did they do to cause all this havoc? They wrapped the ship in enormous Tesla coils that generated so much concentrated electricity that it literally blew the vessel into another dimension. But that's not the kicker. The ship actually went back in time for a while - some say ten minutes, some say ten seconds. It's as if all this Tesla demonic magic fucked around with the space-time continuum, and the thing is, yes, it IS possible: time doesn't just flow in one direction, and space and time are the same thing anyway. Go ask Einstein.

So you have this ghostly freighter, like something out of Kurt Weill's Pirate Jenny, and men getting fused with steel and concrete and going mad and being put in institutions, and ships disappearing and reappearing in a too-successful attempt at a cloaking device, a la Star Trek.

I don't know.

There's more to the icky, squicky feeling I get when I enter this arcane subject. Back when I was researching Harold Lloyd, about a million years ago, I found a very odd web site called Psychic Bridging. It had a lot of weird stuff in it, including a claim that disembodied spirits can get trapped in cell phones and other electronic devices (first I'd heard of that, though I do wonder why no one has thought of it before). But then it mentioned - Harold Lloyd. What I was able to piece together was that he was doing some sort of experimental work for the government during the 1940s, and it was all about time travel, something he (with his endless boyish curiosity) would probably be fascinated with. It was a kind of remote viewing thing called psychic bridging, in which you're the ultimate armchair adventurer, sitting in the present day viewing actual events from the past. But something went terribly wrong. In the words of the blogger, a man named Paul Simon, "Harold Lloyd was hospitalized after becoming self-detached during filming in 1943."

Self-detached. Is that kind of like Peter Pan losing his shadow and having it sewn back on again? Harold Lloyd DID make a movie in the early '40s, his last, and it wasn't very successful. But did he blow his mental circuits doing secret government work, or what? I don't know why it is, but I would not be the least bit surprised.

But the really weird thing is - though I did find one YouTube video made by this Paul Simon, at a certain point the whole thing disappeared. The web site was gone, along with the video. Nobody seems to know what psychic bridging is, or if it even exists. Another disappearing act?

I don't want to think about time travel too much because, though I know it is theoretically possible, it's too full of paradoxes for me to wrap my brain around. What if I went back in time, met my younger self, and killed her? Or - even - killed my parents. See, I don't know how that would work. I would hate to meet any version of myself from the past, and I don't know how that would go anyway - would I just suddenly appear in the living room, or would I be disembodied, just sort of floating around (speaking of invisible) taking notes? Would I recognize my older self and start screaming? For I think it would be infinitely more freaky for your young self to suddenly encounter your old self.

If I took my phone with me, could I take video? Or not? Could I bring it back, or would it disappear? Would I disappear?

I think there are bubbles in time, distortions, maybe even ripples, places where it overlaps, and things that happen over and over again, because it's a mystery. Every once in a while something absolutely freakish comes about, and we run from it, so far and so fast that it's quickly debunked and denied as just too terrifying to be true.

I think about the afterlife sometimes, if there is one, and I hope there isn't because if there is the kind of conventional heaven and hell I grew up with, then I will surely go to hell for all eternity. I know it sounds stupid, but I really do fear it now as I get closer to my own end. There are lots of things I am MORE afraid of, escalating Trumpism, nuclear war, climate change (but don't get me started on THAT or I will lose the few loyal followers I have). Finally, on the subject of time travel I remain open, but not entirely. I like skepticism and think it's healthy, but at the same time, a mind is a terrible thing to close.

My completely rational scientist husband once told me that time travel is theoretically possible, and he said it in a casual oh, yeah way that kind of shook me up. He does not even see it as an odd idea, or beyond the realm of possibility. But I think it can mess you up big-time. The guys on that ship, you know, and Harold Lloyd. . .

This is usually about where I get off.

Is that a cellphone in your pocket, or are you just from another dimension?

This is a little piece I borrowed from a site called Waffles at Noon (link below). Who knows where I saw the original photo, probably when I was looking fruitlessly for something else.

Though the article debunks the photo, I think they're just a bunch of killjoys who are not worthy of their waffles. But as with all these controversial/conspiracy-theory-oriented topics - you decide.

Classic Urban Legend: The Time Traveling Hipster

WAFFLES        http://wafflesatnoon.com/time-traveling-hipster/

DECEMBER 10, 2015

A photo allegedly shows a modern hipster who traveled back in time to the 1940’s. Is the photo real or fake?

The photograph has been circulating since around 2010, with suggestions that the casually-dressed man’s appearance is too modern to fit into the a 1940’s setting. Here is one caption which has circulated with the photo in 2013:

In 1940, a mysterious man was photographed in Canada wearing what seems to be modern clothing and carrying a camera. Its authenticity was proven by NTV in Russia in 2010.

Is this a man with incredibly modern style? Or evidence of time travel?

THE PHOTO

The image is not Photoshopped, and the original can be found at the Bralorne Pioneer Museum in British Columbia, Canada. The people in the photo were attending the re-opening of the South Fork Bridge in British Columbia.

CLOTHING

The logo on the “modern” shirt worn by the man in the image is probably that of the Montreal Maroons hockey team, an NHL team which existed until 1938. Thus, it would be more likely to see someone wearing that shirt in 1940 than in the 2010’s.

One would expect to see this shirt in 1940.

The man’s knitted sweater also doesn’t indicate anything out of the ordinary for the 1940’s.

THE CAMERA

The “modern” camera in the man’s hands is not clearly shown, but Kodak did produce cameras of this size at the time. Another man in the image is also holding a camera.

NTV VIDEO

The caption above is correct in stating that the photo was deemed authentic by NTV in Russia, as seen in the video below:

SUNGLASSES, AND THE ERRONEOUS STANWYCK COMPARISON

Sunglasses with side shades were common in 1940, so these would not have been unusual.

In their attempts to debunk the time traveler theory, some writers have used a photo of Barbara Stanwyck wearing sunglasses in the 1940 film Double Indemnity. If you look closely, however, the glasses are not the same. Stanwyck’s glasses are actually casting a shadow on the side of her face, which – from a distance – resemble the side shades in the sunglasses worn by the man in the 1940 photo.

Barbara Stanwyck’s sunglasses are merely casting a shadow which resemble the man’s side shades.

GOOGLE TRENDS

In chart below shows search interest in this story. As you can see, it was around December 2011 when the story first went viral online. It has had several peaks in interest since that time.

OH, FUCK THAT! WE still believe in the Hipster Time Traveller! WE still believe that such a thing is possible! WE still believe a man from 1970 (or whenever) could appear in a crowd in 1940, doing whatever! WE still believe - no, the Stanwyck thing is just too ridiculous to believe.

But this! What about this??

This is a few seconds of authentic footage taken on Blackfriars Bridge, London, around 1900. The man walking casually with his coat open, pulling his hand out of his pocket, with no hat, does not fit anyone or anything around him. Look at the people walking behind him, in their stiff Edwardian garb. People did their coats up then, and ALWAYS wore hats when outside - it was considered extremely vulgar not to. Newsboys and stableboys and prostitutes wore hats. This guy is bareheaded as he swings along, perhaps tucking something (his cellphone?) into his pocket before walking casually out of frame.

I call this the Time Traveller on Blackfriars Bridge, and I got a couple of good posts out of it back when people were still reading this blog, so why not try to get a bit more juice out of it now? On the subject of hipsters, I was going to riff on this but could only think of two hipsters in all the world:

Edward Snowden, and (of course)

Still a hipster, after all these years.

Oh, you know what? It's fake. No, I mean it isn't fake, it just isn't a hipster. Look at the guy closely. He's a 1940s Joe College sort, wearing a frayed sweater (not a hoodie, as it first appears). He has a nerdy wavy slicked-back hairdo, I mean combed straight back like nobody does, and the glasses are like the glasses of a semi-blind person. I don't know what it is about the hair of men back then - you just never see it now - it was bumpy, not curly, not even wavy really, it had these bumps, and he has them. Some day someone will figure out who he is - or was, because surely he's dead by now! End of story, don't you think?

But then again. What were all those people so eager to get a glimpse of? An alien invasion, perhaps. What else would stop traffic like that?

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George Gershwin: The Graceful Ghost

Gershwin is a time traveller - you can see him out of the corner of your eye. He did not die in the normal sense of the word, because he did not know where he was. He was in a very high fever and dying all alone in a hospital room after failed brain surgery. When he left his body, he experienced extreme disorientation and for quite a while did not realize he was dead. This meant that a light, loose Gershwin-shaped energy field still moved about the world, and lit up whenever his music was played (which was almost all the time). After a very long time, though it was a mere moment in eternity, he began to realize who and how he actually was, that he was no longer in a body and would have to exist in a very different form. Being a soul sojourner from the beginning, this was not a threat but an adventure to him. But even in spite of this necessary metamorphosis, to a remarkable degree, he retained a George Gershwin shape. No matter what sort of problems he was having in his life, and he had many that we don't know anything about, there was a ferocious static-charged supernatural pumped boost of energy that somehow kept on connecting people with each other when he was around. But ironically, in spite of his sacred mission to join people joyously,in his life he had many struggles with intimacy, which led to a loneliness even as he was the most popular man in the room. During this strange leaving-his-body-and-not-being-sure-where-he-was period, he began to have extraordinary insight into not just his own condition, but the human condition.

 GG's emotional affect and his emotions seemed curiously light, but there was a galaxy of melancholy within that he did not show to too many people. The stars in that galaxy exploded out of his fingers and his brain and were made manifest as notes of music on the page. Though he lived at a hurtling pace few people could equal, little did he know that he was absorbing all of humanity's travails, gaining an understanding of suffering that would not be fully realized until he found himself in a different form outside his body. It would have been unbearably painful, had his life (as he knew it) not been over, a blessed cessation of all earthly pain. When a soul or entity gains this sort of awareness, mysterious alchemy takes place because the need here on earth for that level of understanding is so dire. Those pained and anguished places in that broken thing we call the human condition began to draw and attract this generous, gentle, deeply broken spirit. There was Gershwin dust in the room sifting down like stardust, particularly when there was music playing. And there was music playing a lot. 

Someone, not keeping up their guard, felt something strange or warm and not quite familiar in the room, yet also hauntingly familiar. Someone else thought they saw him for a second, or someone that looked like him. There was in some subconscious way a powerful sense that a healing was beginning to happen. As the entity begins to heal, so it heals itself. George's brain gave way, the most disturbing way to die, so that he was basically humbled by losing the genius brain he was celebrated for. Stripped of that, even of that, all that was left was his essence. How can I say how this happens? How can I be sure that George Gershwin is a time traveller and an entity who is basically free to move about within time and space wherever and whenever he wishes?

BLOGGER'S NOTE. Since writing this, one of the first passages I ever wrote about Gershwin and my sense of close contact with him, I found a number of other writings that made my scalp prickle. It does make me wonder: does he have the capacity to move back and forth between worlds, or has he decided to stay in this one, wandering around as curiously and restlessly as he did in life?

My wonderful George experience was completely derailed when everything I wrote was shot down by a so-called friend, a spiritualist medium who has decided to set up his own little fiefdom and call himself God. To be honest, it came out he never actually read any of the things I sent him, but was still certain that it was all bogus. This was also true when he dismissed my first complete novel as "a zany soap opera" (having never read THAT either). Later, when he half-assedly apologized, he said I had "triggered his issues", meaning "you made me do it."

To my chagrin, the entire thing dropped out from under me and disappeared, and I felt considerable grief. I had to keep moving forward and practically stopped thinking about it. He had triggered embarrassment in me, which I guess was what he wanted. But I had trusted him, and now I didn't know why I took that risk.

Then the other day, someone or something entered my office - just came in, I mean. Didn't so much waft or float or materialize like the ghost of Jacob Marley. He just walked in, like Love in that song. He walked in on my left side and came around so I was facing him and I saw that sweet, familiar look and that indescribable vibe.

George was back.

Below are a couple of quotes from the many (many, many) books on George. It seems he does appear to people, including his own sad, bereaved brother/writing partner, Ira. It's too bad he could not have enjoyed the visit more, sad that he was so terrified at George's friendly, unspectral return.  I feel George as the most gorgeous, the most glorious presence, but at the same time soft, tender - really, quite indescribable, the most beautiful of vibes stealing into the room.

“George even passed the most acid of tests for great leadership by remaining a presence to his followers even after he’d left the planet. Ann ‘Willow Weep for Me’ Ronell told me some half century after his death that she still ‘saw’ Gershwin regularly in the crowds of the Upper West Side, looking as if he’d just walked out the door. And on that same day, Burton ‘How About You’ Lane testified to an even more precise epiphany. Lane had recently been to a concert of Gershwin’s newly-refurbished piano rolls being played on a baby grand pianola in a pool of spotlight. And as the notes began to go mechanically down and up, ‘There was George for a moment,’ he exclaimed, ‘playing away. I almost passed out.’”

- The House that George Built, Wilfrid Shed

"As Ira grew older, he became not less but more obsessed with George. When he was in his eighties, Michael Feinstein, who had become something of a surrogate son to him, heard him talking to George in his sleep. These were, according to Feinstein, 'lengthy conversations' that were 'often filled with anger, centering around Ira's desire not to stay here on earth and George's insistence that he stay.' Just before Ira's death in 1983, he revealed to Feinstein in a hushed voice something he had never told anyone else. Shortly after George's passing, he had looked into his brother's workroom upstairs at 1019 North Roxbury and seen him 'sitting on the sofa, smiling and nodding to me. It terrified me. I wasn't drinking. I wasn't drunk. But I saw him.'"

- George Gershwin, An Intimate Portrait, Walter Rimler

Time traveller

George was one of the few who busted the code.

Who realized we shouldn't be limited by something as foolish as Time.

And thus, he became a Time Traveller.

Music is temporal, not spatial.

It takes up time, not space.

Though it never runs backwards, it runs in many directions

and has many dimensions

that we cannot hear.

Bust it through a prism

and you'll have overtones

that I guarantee will spook you out

no longer recognizable

as the tones from which they came.

Singing and spinning

even bending as time should never bend

and in its scary iridescence

we meet ourselves again and again

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD: Bob Dylan wrote all of George Gershwin's songs!

 

Sooooooo! You think George Gershwin was an original, do you? You think he was the genius of that place, y’know, that alley with all those tin pans lying around? You think he wrote hundreds-a great songs like Mammy’s Little Baby Loves Shortnin’, Shortnin, and Mairsy-Dotes? WRONG. He stole from everybody, just like every legendary composer who ever lived.

This exposé will intersperse my unique revelations about Gershwin and his times with comments from that unassailable fountainhead of true lies, Wikipedia. The author uses it all the time to lend an aura of veracity to her completely fictitious essays and to casually bend facts to her own inclinations. Pay attention!

Gershwin was influenced by French composers of the early twentieth century. In turn Maurice Ravel was impressed with Gershwin's abilities, commenting, "Personally I find jazz most interesting: the rhythms, the way the melodies are handled, the melodies themselves. I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing.” The orchestrations in Gershwin's symphonic works often seem similar to those of Ravel; likewise, Ravel's two piano concertos evince an influence of Gershwin.

Gershwin asked to study with Ravel. When Ravel heard how much Gershwin earned, Ravel replied with words to the effect of, "You should give me lessons”. It was never made clear what kind of lessons he meant.  In fact, there is little evidence that Gershwin even understood French and had no idea what Ravel had just proposed. “To me,” he was quoted in the press, “it all sounds like Hinky Dinky Parley Voo.”

In spite of the fact that their attempt to meld their talents failed, the composers had something in common: they both died of brain tumors. This is proof that extended periods of composing causes the brain stem to harden into a hockey puck. Either that, or medical science is wrong and tumors are catching.

Some versions of this suspicious "you should give me lessons" story feature Igor Stravinsky rather than Ravel as the composer; however Stravinsky confirmed that he originally heard the story from Ravel, at one of those salons where they waved at each other and went, “Wooooo-hooooo!” Other accounts differ. In fact they differ so wildly that, as with most musical anecdotes,  it probably never happened at all.

Some claim that Gershwin was a time-traveller who showed up in Bob Dylan’s closet in 1962. Dylan's early faux-rockabilly style was a complete failure in Dinkytown,a very small pioneer settlement in Minnesota where none of the residents were more than 2 inches tall. At the time, Dylan was playing a pink plastic electric guitar with gold sparkles in it that he ordered out of the Sears catalogue.

“I want to study with you,” stated Gershwin, citing his complete lack of expertise in writing popular song.

“Hey man,” Dylan replied (though it is doubtful these are his exact words: citation required). "We can't study together. I already dropped outa high school."

“I don’t have any hits,” Gershwin claimed.

“I don’t either, man.  I'm still singin' Buddy Holly songs."

"Sing one for me, o legend of your times."

"Goes kinda like this.

I believe it to my soul you're the devil in nylon hose
I believe it to my soul you're the devil in nylon hose
For the harder I work the faster my money goes

Well I said shake, rattle and roll
I said shake rattle and roll
I said shake, rattle and roll
I said shake rattle and roll
Well you won't do right
To save your doggone soul

"I note that the tune is somewhat monochromatic."

"Say what?"

"It's all one note."

"Yeah, easier to remember, man. I have to write my changes on my sleeve."

"And the lyric has a certain primitive energy. After all, Cole Porter did allude to a glimpse of stocking."

"Well I ain't makin' a livin' at it yet. Too busy obliteratin' my middle-class upbringing and fabricatin' my image as bum ridin' the rails with Woody. But things are lookin' up. I’m screwin’ this girl named Baez and she's goin' places."

“Maybe I should’ve approached Schoenberg.”

“Yeah. He’s a good plumber, man.”

“Do you mean he plumbs the depth of the human soul?”

“Dig it.”

(This is a good example of how a completely inane remark can be twisted around to reflect future genius.)

But his collaboration with Dylan was not to be (sorry about the title, I changed my mind as I wrote this), nor did he ever work with that other guy whose name is so hard to spell. So he began to steal from other rock legends, notably Bruce Springsteen, whose remarks are not on record.

But the vandalism didn’t stop there. Gershwin's own Concerto in F was criticized for being related to the work of Claude Debussy, more so than to the expected jazz style. The comparison did not deter Gershwin from continuing to explore French styles. The title of An American in Paris reflects the very journey that he had consciously taken as a composer: "The opening part will be developed in typical French style, in the manner of Debussy and Les Six, though the tunes are original." Others claimed he used the term American to give the piece a veneer of cultural relevance while he sucked all the juices out of the French impressionists. Later Leslie Caron (French!) dumped a bucket of sexuality over the whole thing like whitewash, which is all people remember anyway.

Aside from the French influence, Gershwin was intrigued by the works of Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, and Arnold Schoenberg. He also ripped off Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin (his chief rival, who never learned to play the piano and was in fact tone-deaf).  He also asked Schoenberg for composition lessons. Schoenberg refused, saying "I would only make you a bad Schoenberg, and you're such a good Gershwin already." Gershwin’s reply was, “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww.”  (This quote is similar to one credited to Maurice Ravel during Gershwin's 1928 visit to France – "Why be a second-rate Ravel, when you are a first-rate Gershwin?" He then hit him up for a loan.)

The  “first-rate Gershwin” remark which every composer in human history claimed to have uttered first has in fact been attributed to Gershwin himself, or perhaps his longtime walking companion Giorgg Greshvinn.

Meanwhile, Gershwin’s ghostwriter Mannie Maneschevitz turned out a semi-hit called Second-rate Gershwin, later made popular by Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl.

Gershwin’s dog was also named Gershwin. An Irish setter, the dog caused confusion on Tin Pan Alley, where he often drank from a tin pan, and in the salons of Paris where he had his fur foiled (he was actually a black lab). Gershwin was sometimes heard to exclaim, “Good boy, Gershwin!”, which was mistaken for arrogance on his part. Later one of his rivals George Greshwin wrote in the Henbane Times, “That new song Gershwin wrote is really a dog.”

Then again, there is Oscar Levant’s most brilliant, mind-blowing, searing quip ever, better than anything he ever blurted out on To Tell the Truth or Hollywood Squares: “An evening with George Gershwin sure is boring.”

Russian Joseph Schillinger's influence as Gershwin's teacher of composition (1932–1936) was substantial in providing him with a method of composition. (Author's note: Wikipedia wrote this atrocious sentence, not me.) There has been some disagreement about the nature of Schillinger's influence on Gershwin. After the posthumous success of Porgy and Bess, Schillinger claimed he had a large and direct influence in overseeing the creation of the opera; Ira completely denied that his brother had any such assistance for this work. A third account of Gershwin's musical relationship with his teacher was written by Gershwin's close friend Vernon Duke, also a Schillinger student, in an article for the Musical Quarterly. (And so on, and so on, and so on. Time for a new paragraph.)

Porgy and Bess caused controversy in 1936 when it was retitled The Watermelon Review. Featuring only white actors in blackface, it was raided and permanently closed by the police when the burnt cork melted off the actors’ faces, revealing the shocking fact that white people had appeared in a black opera. Gershwin’s suggestion that the opera be restaged with black actors was met with stunned silence. A modest revival featuring Al Jolson playing all the characters (singing such tunes as Mammy, You is my Woman Now and Sum-sum-summertime) resulted in a record number of rotten tomatoes being thrown at the stage, to a possible depth of 3 feet.  The star of the very first talking picture The Jazz Singer was quoted as saying, “This was another Jolson triumph”, before going off to make a movie called The Jazz Singer II: Yes, It’s Crap, but It’s Got Sound.

During another time-travel episode in 1967, Rolling Stone magazine attempted to analyze Gershwin’s plagiarism but quit after page 3 because they couldn’t get a good cover photo. Oscar Levant kept standing in front of him.

What set Gershwin apart, aside from his overbite, his strange-looking skin rash and a propensity for screaming in the street, was his ability to manipulate forms of music into his own unique voice. He took the jazz he discovered on Tin Pan Alley into the mainstream by splicing its rhythms and tonality with that of the popular songs of his era. In musical circles, this is known as “stealing”.

Although George Gershwin would continually make grand statements about his music, he believed that "true music must reflect the thought and aspirations of the people and time. My people are Americans. My time is today.” Today didn’t last very long because his brain exploded 15 minutes later. He also dissed Toscanini for pretending not to have heard Rhapsody in Blue. “I can’t believe it,” Gershwin remarked. “He must have stuck bubblegum in his ears.” This statement appears in Bartlett’s Quotations on page 96 (citation needed: this whole article is complete bullshit!).

CODA. As usual, screwing around with images is both more fun than writing, and much more time-consuming. Thinking about Buddy Holly and his black-framed glasses, the kind that are once more coming into fashion, I wondered how Gershwin would look with Dylan's eyes, and vice-versa. The results were unsettling.

Of course I never got a perfect match because their facial shape is so different, but what struck me is that the eyes were almost interchangeable in the quality of their gaze, their intensity, focus, and almost scary self-possession. Nothing has ever thrown Bob Dylan, not even being booed for ten years for singing Sunday School songs, and Gershwin similarly knew he was great stuff and that no one could equal him.

Gershwin was tragically cut down at 38, and everyone assumes he would have gone right on pouring out hit tunes and classic operas and things. Such might not have been the case. He may well have been a sort of Chaplin figure, a sad elder statesman unable to adapt to dramatically changing times. Fascinatin' Rhythm wouldn't play well even in the era of Vic Damone and the Rat Pack, let alone today. The people who listen to Gershwin now are mainly senior citizens, or musicologists making yet another one of those dreary PBS specials in which they dust off the progeny of the progeny of somebody famous in the 1920s. Plus a few high school students being required to perform the popular music of a century ago just for extra band credits.

Dylan has just hung on by his teeth, tough as an old lizard, his voice completely shot, but unlike 95% of other legends he's a shape-shifter and won't stick to any particular era. Lots of people still associate him with Blowin' in the Wind and "protest songs", but real fans (and I am not one of them: I gave up after Desire/Blood on the Tracks, which I still think would've made a great double album) appreciate the fact that he is still completely unpredictable. He wins tons of awards now, lifetime achievement things, and each medal slung around his neck seems more like an albatross. But hey. . . there's always the Christmas album.

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