Thursday, January 04, 2007

Genius Cluster

Susan Cheever was on the Bob Edwards show this morning. She’s the author of American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work.

All of those big names in her title, well, they all were neighbors in Concord, Mass. Herman Melville was also on the scene for awhile. Just think of the books that these folks produced: Little Women, The Scarlett Letter, Walden, Moby Dick, etc. They changed the way we think and live. In the interview, Cheever refers to the gang as a “Genius Cluster.”

This reminded me of another Genius Cluster I heard about the other day, although a somewhat more sex, drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll kinda gang. Laurell Canyon, California, in the 1960’s, was home to Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Jim Morrison, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, John Mayall, the Mamas and the Papas, Carole King, the Eagles, and Frank Zappa, to name a few. It’s the neighborhood that changed rock forever. I heard David Crosby talking about watching Eric Clapton hear Joni Mitchell sing for the first time. Clapton was blown away.

When you are a member of a Genius Cluster do you know it? Have I ever belonged to a Genius Cluster, you ask.

Come to think of it, I guess I have…

I’m the Spiderman on the right. My cousin Brice is on the left and my brother Kyle in the middle. We would forever change the way the world wears underoos – shirts tucked and with fierce attitude.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is anwesome--any more flattering pics of the stud in the middle?

Kelsey said...

Yeah, we knew early on that Kyle was going to be "different."