General – Page 5 – Years Of Being

An English Way With Words

Most people, I believe, write some sort of poetry when they are very young. Over the years, this poetic impulse, for the majority, gradually shuts down, as the “real world” overtakes us. I’m one of those who, while not a published poet, continued to write poetry and songs all my life.

And I have a theory (surprise!) w.r.t. the writing of poetry in my native tongue, which is obviously English. Now, poetry is a universal impulse, written in all languages and by all cultures over the millenia. But it seems to me that poetry written in English, to a greater extent than other languages, benefits enormously from the very structure of our language. More than almost any other “common” modern language, the very genesis of English, amalgamated at the Battle of Hastings from the Anglo-Saxon and the invading French, contains ambiguities and overloaded meanings that I think are less prevalent in other, “purer” languages. And this birthmark, I think, also makes English extremely susceptible to continued expansion. Yes, in modern life, all languages accept and incorporate foreign words and phrases (many from English), but our language has had this predilection since it came into being. Perhaps in the same way that people who master at least one foreign language early in life have been shown to be much better at learning subsequent languages. Once the groundwork of an extra language has been laid, the brain seems more disposed to adding other kinds of words and syntax. Perhaps our cultural communication mechanism (ie, English), born in two worlds, is more prone to adding words from other worlds.

Furthermore, the mixed syntactical origins of English have led to (perhaps) awkward constructs in phrasing and sense. As an example, the auxiliary verbs are all over the map. The merging (actually, a sort of re-merging, Anglo-Saxon meeting back up with the Normans, who had taken a deep detour into Latinism) of our two main language DNA strands led to unusual pronunciations and syllabic stresses and spellings.

And for me, it is this resulting ambiguity and combination of soundings that has made English the perfect language for poetry. Phrases and lyrics can contain multitudes of overloaded meanings, like a hologram of intersecting intents. For myself, at least, that provides a power in English poetry that may not be readily available in other languages. Beautiful, transcendent images can be described in any language. But images that can lead to multiple emotional responses, even responses that may contradict each other, seem to me have a greater power to invoke that wordless wonder that the best poetry invokes.

At any rate, that is my theory. I wonder if there has ever been a scholarly or formal investigation in a similar vein? It’s likely. There is nothing truly new under the sun.

Relativity
My sunset is someone else’s sunrise
My evening is another person’s dawn
My morning ends another’s daylight
My sunrise stops another’s song.
My arrival’s another’s soul departure
My coming takes up another space
My going makes a space to enter
My leaving leaves one to take my place.
My future is all my children’s history
Tomorrows that they knew yesterday
My story builds on older stories
My past has always led me to today.
My stars shine down as others’ suns
My storms leave peace in others’ skies
My life takes only so much room
A room I see with only these, my eyes.

The Inter-Dimensional Cone Of Silence

In a recent episode of “Marvel’s Agents Of Shield”, a show that I confess I really enjoy, three of our heroes are subjected to some sort of quantum-mechanical explosion. As a result, the three are thrown into an inter-dimensional rift, from which they can see and hear their compatriots, but no one can see or hear or interact with them. They are “out of phase”; the people in our regular world have no way to know they still exist, nor can they contact them. As an added threat, over time, the three in the rift are being drawn further away, and the voices from the real world get fainter and fainter. In fact, unless they can escape, they will be sucked into a nether region from which there can be no escape.

Oddly enough, this situation came to mind when I saw the results of a post-election Public Policy Poll that was just published today. This mind-blowing set of figures reveal the following surreal results, reflecting an Alice in Wonderland world view that is completely at odds with normal reality.

Since Obama has been president, the Dow Jones has risen an astonishing 11,666 points. However, a full 39% of the people who voted for Drumpf believe that the Dow Jones has gone down.
During the same time, unemployment has dropped from 7.8% to 4.6%. 67% of Drumpf voters, however, believe that unemployment has risen.

screebgrabmaddow

In the immediate wake of the election, protests against Drumpf’s election spontaneously arose in major cities all across the nation. The vast majority of Americans understand that these protests were in fact spontaneous. But 73% of Drumpf voters believe that they only occurred because George Soros paid “professional protesters” to stage them. It is only necessary to consider the vast coordination and logistics challenge to arrange to hire these 1000’s of protesters, all across the country, and to do so the day after the election, to realize how insane such a proposition is. But a full 73% of Drumpf voters take it as gospel. Note that the poll is reporting what voters believe. Non-Drumpf voters almost universally believe these protests naturally occurred. Non-Drumpf voters understand implicitly how the election result would naturally shake people to their core, and impel them to react somehow, protesting in the streets in many cases. Drumpf voters instead create a false reality where that was only possible if George Soros paid for it.
A full 40% of Drumpf voters believe that Drumpf actually won the popular vote, in spite of essentially blanket coverage that shows Clinton winning the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes.
60% of Drumpf voters believe that millions of people voted illegally for Clinton. Millions. Just consider the amount of fraud that represents. Did you vote? Did you stand in line and present your voter ID and sign the registry? Do you realize how impossible it would be for literally millions of people to vote illegally? Especially given that all these polling places are manned by 1000’s of poll workers, most of whom have been doing their work diligently for years.
Here’s an amazing finding: a full 29% of Drumpf voters, almost a third, don’t think California’s votes should even be counted in the election. It is very difficult to construct any valid reason for such an exclusion. Difficult, that is, except for a third of those who voted for Drumpf.
Another “opinion” that is very revealing is this: 59% of American voters believe that Donald Drumpf should definitely release his tax returns. Ask Drumpf voters? 59% of them say “No, he doesn’t need to release them.” The extent of Drumpf’s potential conflict of interest is already astounding. And even though he is exempt from pure “conflict of interest”, the Constitution clearly puts him in jeopardy for receiving emoluments (ie, bribes) from foreign powers. It is one of the two explicitly named offenses for which a President can be impeached (the other is treason). Drumpf’s actions since the election clearly imply that he is already skirting with these crimes. His tax returns would reveal unequivocally what business connections might be involved in such legally incriminating activities. Drumpf voters don’t want to know. See no evil, hear no evil.

Trumpland is a very strange landscape indeed. In this inter-dimensional cone of silence, this undiscovered country, no hint of objective reality can affect the inhabitants. They swim in a world of self-enforcing fabrications, untouched by such standards as “facts” and “numbers.” The upstart, the horrible consequence, is that we can be sure that there will be no short-term negative reaction from this pool of absolutely true believers. Drumpf can continue to make insane appointments all across his Cabinet, renegeing on virtually every campaign promise he made. He can fail to build his Wall. He can back-pedal on Obamacare. He can prove himseld a faithless a coward, failing to implement all the vows he made during the election season. And his followers will almost certainly ignore all of this, choosing instead to shout their approval, to Drumpf and each other, deaf to the real world in their heavily fortified Cone of Silence.

It will only be when the jobs continue to bleed, and not return, and when their own health care and Medicare come under attack and disappear, when the national debt explodes while the 1% scrapes the cream off the top; then, at long last they may look out from their interdimensional rift and suspect the awful truth.

The problem is, it will not just be these masses of self-hypnotized dupes who fall into the netherworld. All of us will have been sucked into Hell.

Random Aphorisms

Over the years, I’ve generated several aphorisms, which I will now share with you. You’re welcome.

I know you believe that you comprehend what you thought I meant, but I don’t think you realize that I don’t understand what I thought I said.
She’s about as private as phone booth.
If everything were true, life wouldn’t be any fun. If nothing were true, life wouldn’t be worth living.
When they can’t take it anymore, that’s when they get taken in.
Although one cannot discount the effects that accumulate from lifestyle, the mere accumulation of years inevitably overshadows all other mortal effects.
I’d rather be forearmed with knowledge than post-pummeled by ignorance.
It doesn’t matter at all about what was, it only matters about what is.
Literature, like Drama and almost all of History, happened mainly in the past. Therefore it should come as no surprise to learn that most of the people associated with it are dead.
Christmas Eve, for the hopeless mystic, is a time that, even after we have grown pragmatic and prosaic almost beyond redemption, holds the possibility of magic, poetry and miracle. The animals might very well talk. The snow might very well fall. The hard-hearted misers that have slowly engulfed our souls might very well melt away at the sound of an old carol, or a gentle offer to a stranger, or at a child’s innocence.
God is that which doesn’t mind being.
God is being becoming.
God is a nonchalant infinite regression.
Christmas is when everything seems possible, waiting for the Bishop’s Wife, waiting for the Miracle to occur on 34th Street, waiting for George to get Clarence his wings, waiting for the right jolly old elf. Waiting with a lump in your throat and your heart on your sleeve.
Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and the like tried to make music that attempted to be the trip. The Grateful Dead played music that was grist for the trip.
The key to exercise is routine. When you get into it, it is hard to get out, but when you get out of it, it’s harder to get in.
It’s like pulling cultural teeth.
Never seek anything. Always expect everything.
In doing art, you must decide whether you want to communicate, or just talk to yourself.
The hardest thing is to move through and past one’s anger. Because anger, especially righteous anger, has the insidious quality of feeling so good. And while it has the seeming power to focus and motivate, inevitably it undermines and deforms the goals for which you strive.
You don’t want less than perfection to affect others’ perception‏.
More effort than it’s worth? Or worth a little more effort?
Some people wax oratorical. Others wane oratorical.
Of course life is a joke. But we don’t know the setup. And we never hear the punchline.
The Universe is implying more than we infer.

And finally, two of my very favorites:

The unexamined faith is not worth believing.
I don’t want to steal the show. I only want to borrow it for a while.

Once More Into the Breach!

Just a quick note to urge everyone to not back down, to fight the good fight, to obtain and maintain a fierce commitment to oppose the insanity that a Donald Drumpf presidency represents.

Like Saturday Night Live and Alec Baldwin, we have to continuously keep the hammer slamming on the point. Drumpf cannot withstand a constant barrage, his egomania is too thin-skinned not to shatter into thousands of contradictory shards. He’s shown that over and over.

We need to urge the media to call him and his cronies out, to confront them with the lies and exaggerations they have ceaselessly trotted out. Their tactics would do Goebbels proud, and might very well succeed with the masses, unless massive opposition rises up to deny any such victory. Contact all media outlets and demand they call a spade a spade, and never let his outrageous actions and words to ever appear even faintly normal. Because if we allow this abomination to become the new normal, the road back to decency will grow very difficult.

If Drumpf persists in redefining “tweeting” as the only news outlet, then we must invade the twitterverse and combat him on his own ground. Launch the attacks, let no insane tweet go unchallenged.

Finally, bombard your congresspeople with calls and emails. Even if you live, like I do, in a hopelessly red state, sheer numbers can have an effect. Demand that cabinet and judicial candidates be examined thoroughly, and that they pass muster with evolved practices. We cannot allow this attempt at American recidivism to succeed unchallenged.

Stand against tyranny and insanity! Against sexism, racism and cultural degradation. Against hatred and bigotry and bullying.

“And Saint Crispian’s Day shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.
And those in America now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their lives cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

Protected: Remembrance of Things (Not Long) Past

Some Not-So-Random Notes

Electing Nancy Pelosi, again, was a bad mistake. The Democrats need the “same old same old” like they need the proverbial hole in the head. The times and the situation are drastic; drastic measures are required. This means we need new ideas, new leadership, new voices. Not the demonstrably failed policies that resulted in The Disaster.
I confess that I have been deeply troubled by the complete lack of intervention by Obama in the South Dakota pipeline travesty. People are being injured, their rights trampled. Water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures and other inhumane tactics are being brought to bear. The mantle of justice is so clearly on the side of the protesters. Even if Trump were to reverse the action, it is unconscionable that the Obama administration not step in and stop this horrible and indefensible use of force.
So Trump calls up the President of Taiwan, effectively throwing a grenade on decades of delicate Sino-American diplomacy, dating back to Nixon’s visit to China. He is a reckless, ignorant cannon rolling around on the deck of the world. Either he didn’t comprehend the enormity of the diplomatic disaster his phone call represented (which would be a horrifying possibility), or else he did understand, and chose to act completely unilaterally, ignoring the State Department, years of protocol, and the fact that Obama is still President (showing that he doesn’t care anything for international norms, also horrifying). As Sen. Chris Murphy, an expert on foreign affairs, has noted, this is how wars start. In the aftermath, we discover that Trump is planning a hotel in Taiwan. Oh. Of course.
General “Mad Dog” Mattis, freshly retired from the Marine Corps in 2013, would require a waiver from the Senate to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense (the law requires a minimum 7 years between active duty and serving as Secretary of Defense). Mattis is the ultimate rejection of the tenet, in place since George Washington, that America’s military should be under civilian control. Mattis has been very vocal in his glorification of war and killing. To confirm him as Defense would be a terrible setback to a basic tenet of the American experiment in government.

The Auditory Differential

[A repost of an entry from 2012, before I lost years of blog posts due to a internet “hiccough”. I hope to restore some of these over time.]

The arc of the history of pop music may be described as an inevitable convergence to homogeneity: songs tend to sound more and more the same. Not surprisingly, the ultimate force driving this trend is money. When a hit hits the charts, music companies and their producers naturally try to reproduce whatever has already succeeded. The same green fuse that generates copycat TV shows and endless movie sequels and Broadway revivals drives the heart of the music industry. If they bought that, they’ll surely buy this since it looks and sounds like that. Nothing breeds fear of the New as much as does success of the Old. That’s what happens when creativity becomes an industry.

So modern pop music all sounds the same. That statement reminds me of the same old complaint old curmudgeons have made for generations. I imagine my children would vehemently argue that I am simply too old and jaded to distinguish the nuances that differentiate modern pop music. But not so quick. I am not saying that all music today sounds the same. O, contraire. A plethora of relatively inexpensive digital devices now exist that allow 1000’s of artists to experiment with whatever musical notions their Muse has provided, creating top-quality recordings that can rival the best studio recordings of a few years ago. Furthermore, the Internet exists as a conduit allowing them to distribute their creations to anyone who wants to hear them, and have an immediacy of contact with fans and followers never dreamed possible by the album stars of yesteryear. This combination has made the eclectic a viable music alternative, and neither artists nor listeners are constrained by what a few old men at the major record labels think is “hot”. The world has never been as accommodating to such an incredibly rich smorgasbord of musical choices as it is today.

But pop music, radio music, Top 40 music, that’s a totally different proposition. There sameness is the rule. Distinguishing an artist or a style or lyrical notions is only possible at about the fifth decimal place. Success in the mass market is, contrasted to the situation in the Internet Free-For-All, more rigid and constrained than it’s ever been. The broad genres (Pop, Country, etc) are certainly different, but the individual offerings within any of the big phyla all blend together into a mushy swamp.

And it’s not just copycat producers creating this indistinguishable sea. Technology and recording techniques have all become increasingly refined and finally they’ve converged. And all these tools, used by all the producers, tend to produce sameness, so that the machines themselves begin to dictate the final result. Audio tracks are cleaned, adjusted, reharmonized, compressed and packaged into final mixes that have the instruments and voices all arranged perfectly. Smoothly. Evenly. Mechanically. The software has settings so that engineers can preselect almost any existing “sound” and obtain that instantaneously, tweaking perhaps to add a bit of nuance. And, yes, the emphasis is on existing sound.

It’s probably a natural human condition to imbue the music one heard during their teen, formative years with a special aura, a quality that makes those musical memories shine. The world was still unfolding then, hormones were chaotic, emotions were extreme, and all sensory impressions were deeper and somehow more “meaningful”. As the Animals sang, “When I was young it was more important/ Pain more painful and laughter much louder, yeah”. So naturally, I have heightened impressions of the music of the mid- to late-60’s. But even accounting for my rose-colored ears, it seems pretty clear to me that songs on the radio in that period covered a much wider range of styles and lyricism than they do now. Consider the aforementioned Animals. Contrast Eric Burdon to, say, Glen Campbell singing a Jimmy Webb lyric. Juxtaposed against any Beatles tune. Compared to the Jefferson Airplane. The Four Tops. Bob Dylan. Dusty Springfield. Simon & Garfunkel. The Supremes. Lou Christie. Donovan. The Righteous Brothers. Neil Diamond. Buffalo Springfield. The Beach Boys. And this only scratches the surface of the range of styles “popular” then. Yes, there was crap on the airwaves as well. “96 Tears” as well as pretty much anything by Bobby Goldsboro. But think about: even crap could get on the radio then. No, there was no Internet, and yes, there was only AM radio and your record player. But there was much less filtration going on. Even the music moguls were ready to try anything, because somewhere along the line, the Expectation Mold had broken, and no one really knew what “worked” anymore. So they tried anything. And everything.

I think that period was somewhat akin to the so-called Cambrian explosion, when there occurred on this planet a rapid diversity of species unlike anything that had happened before or since. What caused this wild pastiche of musical experiments? Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was the social upheaval that was the backdrop to the era. The blending of black and white music. The Vietnam War. The British Invasion. Whatever the causes, that decade still reverberates in our musical consciousness, and the musical possibilities seemed endless.

But uniformity wins in the end, at least on the large scale. In the mass market, you won’t go wrong if you expect sameness compounded by more sameness. Individually, however, there will always be nooks and crannies and hideaways where the eclectic and the special and the unusual and the idiosyncratic will thrive. Search them out. Listen for the odd musical or lyrical phrase that touches you, moves you, speaks to you. And claim it for your own ears.

The Soft Parade

Drumpf continues to careen out of control. Calling up world leaders like they were high school buddies. Telling Pakistan how “fantastic” they were, accepting an invitation to visit, offering to help with whatever problems they have (we have avoided any such statements for decades due to the Kashmir dispute and their possession of nukes). Congratulating the dictator/”president” of Kazahkistan on 25 years of success (he was a dictator for two decades, then elected president with 97% of the vote. Right.) Telling the new British PM to “drop by next time she was in the States.” My God. Maybe they can have pizza together.

He claimed to save Carrier jobs from moving to Mexico. But in actuality, he had Pence not resign the Indiana governorship in order that he could authorize $7M in tax breaks for Carrier, so that Carrier would only ship half of the 2000 jobs to Mexico. The Trumpeters all claim this as proof positive of his campaign pledge to bring jobs back, lacking the wit to realize that no jobs came back from anywhere, that a 1000 jobs left, and not because he punished the offending corporation, but because he gave them millions in taxpayers’ dollars.

He’s started a completely unprecedented (as is everything about this out of control megalomaniac) “Thank You” tour. Instead of focusing on the transition, or receiving daily intelligence briefings, the egotistical Orange Fool is holding rallies everywhere, acting like the campaign was still in progress, but apparently with the sole purpose of touting his win, bashing enemies he’s already beaten, and absorbing the praise of the mindless. He cannot live, it seems, without constant adulation.

As for me, I continue to be deeply depressed by every aspect of what is coming. The media, on the other hand, continues to normalize him. It seems that even the so-called “good guys” will simply lay down and wait for the chariot to roll over them. Except for Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnel and Joy Reid. Thank god for them, and especially Rachel. If the day comes when she stops making the obvious point, I will know the fight is truly lost.

Pelosi was reelected as minority leader, proving that the Dems have no plan or even real intent whatsoever of impeding the coming disaster. Tom Ryan from Ohio had great ideas and fire in his belly, something we desperately needed. Instead, we got the same old same old. Damn it! Why won’t somebody make a real effort to do something?

But then I realize that there’s nothing to do, except hunker down and hope there’ll be something left to salvage when the storm of stupidity and greed passes.

“Welcome to the Soft Parade
All our lives we sweat and save,
Building for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say,
Somehow to defend this place
Everything must be this way,
Everything must be this way, yeah
The Soft Parade has now begun,
Listen to the engines hum”

Jim Morrison

When Will We Hit the Trump Bump?

In the movie, Inception, a band of sleep invaders experience common lucid dreams, in fact, dreams within dreams, diving so deep into the dream world that nothing can get them out. It is only a physical “bump”, occuring in the real world in which the dreamers sleep, that wakes everybody up. Falling into a tub of water. Or running headling into a wall.

At some point, the poor, deluded slobs who elected Drumpf, most of whom after the election turned immediately back to watching pro wrestling and football, and shooting things, will experience the “Drumpf Bump.” They will waken, look around, and suddenly discover that there are no new jobs for them to march in to work, nor any reduction in the number of immigrants living in their city, and a host of other broken promises. Broken, because they were impossible in the first place.

Worse than that, this guy who was gonna “drain the swamp” has hired some of the worst alligators to ever inhabit those murky waters. A Treasury secretary who was Wall Street’s “king of home repossesion” during the housing crisis, who put more of them out on the street and homeless than anybody else. A Health and Human Services secretary who will certainly work to abolish Obamacare, but who has also adamantly opposed the provisions that disallowed rejection for previous conditions. Who like Speaker Ryan, wants to privatize Medicare, hopefully by next summer. Who denies that women’s health, including birth control, need any special considerations. These considerations will immediately affect the Trumpsters who fell for his demagogic spell.

Other appointments are more evidence of swamp trawling, but most Trumpsters won’t have any clear idea of what these people do, or why it matters. For instance, a Defense secretary who is a retired Marine general nicknamed “Mad Dog”. Another retired general for National Security Advisor who denies that Islam is a religion. And on and on and on.

And meanwhile, the Romneys and the other mainstream GOP figures, people who less than a month ago were screaming that Donald Drumpf was a crook, a fraud, a huckster, and lacking every possible qualification to be President, all these hacks come groveling to Drumpf Towers, looking for a bone, something to gnaw on when the Rape of America gains a full head of steam. It’s amazing how disingenuous and pathetic these sycophants behave. And one has to ask: what sensible person would actually want to be associated with an administration that is guaranteed to go down in history as one of the worst and most corrupt to ever hold power? A sensible person would run as far and as fast as they could in the opposite direction, lie low until the shit flood had passed completely by, then re-emerge, looking for whatever opportunities would present themselves in that bleak and post-apocalyptic landscape.

I confess: I wake every morning with fear knotted in my gut, realizing what real and present dangers every American faces as long as the Orange Buffoon remains the President. Knowing that there is every chance in the world that the Medicare I rely on could very well disappear into a privatized hell within a year. That the health care my children depend on could vanish just as quickly. That the financial system will almost certainly gallop headlong toward another cliff, with nothing to check it, and no one even concerned.

When the Drumpf Bump happens, and the silly geese who blindly believed all the Trumpian hogwash open their sleepy eyes and gaze on the results of his betrayal, it could get very ugly in the Red states.

Or perhaps they’ll just go back to sleep. Or watch television. Until the power company cuts off the electricty.

Trump, the Tweeting Twit

It has become petty evident that the post-Disaster* universe we inhabit has another “we’re not in Kansas anymore” wrinkle in the fabric of space-time: Donald Drumpf obviously intends to replace the tried and true form of the “Press Conference” with his tweets. Rather than providing news media with structured press events (he has not held a general press conference in foru months, and shows no intention of holding one in the near future), Drumpf has reverted to the only form of communication his tiny hands and mind can focus on: the 140 characters allowed in a tweet. Any longer form is clearly beyond the grasp of his “intellect” (I use the word in its broadest possible sense).

Furthermore, the “substance” of his tweets (again, the broadest possible sense of the word) has not been modified one iota from the garbage he unleashed during the campaign. From the grossly inappropriate (for a POTUS, or even POTUS-elect) “Fidel Castro is Dead!” to the paranoid delusions about “professional protesters” (who filled the streets in major cities denouncing his election), to the most recent idiocy that he would have won the popular vote if it hadn’t been for all the illegal voting by immigrants, Drumpf continues to reveal his mental instability and childish temperament.

The thought that this imbecile will actually sit in the Oval Office, humming to himself while composing such tweets, rather than attending to the business at hand, that thought, while comical, and worthy of many SNL skits, is simultaneously terrifying.

We only thought our national nightmare was finally over when the election was finally over. Our true national nightmare is only just beginning. And we will watch it played out 140 characters at a time, unfiltered and straight from this deranged mind, day after day.

*Disaster will, for the time being, remain for me a synonym for the 2016 Presidential Election.