What's the Bottom Line?

I am tired of being mind fucked.

The Future American Economy

            For survival’s sake we as human beings have to be flexible.  I have found the older you get the more flexible you must become.  Actually in my life compromising my life long musical ambitions became the norm.  In music always one had to be competitive to stay ahead.  I learned this early or rather just worked hard because it was the thing to do.  You could either drink beer and smoke pot, or excel in some particular field.  Because I have been a musician since childhood it seemed normal to try to excel in music.  Luckily my background and training paid off and my diligent dedicated labor kept me ahead in the musical game.  I was able to begin playing “gigs” and making money from playing music.  I never made a conscious decision to be cocky.  You just had to be to be competitive.  When I moved to the Midwest from the American South, I received a rather rude awakening.  The acclimation that took place over several years was one that was socialist.  The musicians in Columbus were not concerned with being told how good you were.  They were honest and genuine enough to want you to be a part of their fraternity, because there was a common thread.  You all loved music.  That love was what allowed you to become a part of their community and thus “gig.”  I learned a gigantic lesson in sincerity.  Over the years it became boring to me to concern myself with self-promotion.  I had had so much of myself over the years, I was not interested in hearing myself tell anyone how well I played and that someone should give me a gig.  I begin to pursue music because it was the right thing to do.  What could that mean?  The right thing to do is part of the Protestant Work Ethic.  We work hard as men, because it was why we were put here on this earth.  Our job is to succeed.  It is right to continue to learn, be creative, and be productive.  That is why I do music.  I have forgotten in America the field of commercial music is a dog eat dog scenario.  I had been involved in academia for almost nine years.  I wasn’t having to compete in the “real world” for recognition as a musician.  I had paid my dues.  Now that I no longer immediately am involved with academia, the rules of engagement seem to have changed.  The game has changed.  Above all the music has changed.  The kind of music I was taught and to which I listened was personal.  It allowed for personal expression.  If the music performance didn’t have your soul in it, you would fold.  It would become very cold.  You no longer would be playing music in public.  Now the game is to be flexible.  The game is to compromise.  The game is to not play like we played by my learning.  If you do you become an outcast for not lowering yourself to the lowest common denominator.  Recently I have been trying to become re-motivated about music.  Because I have been a professional musician for over twenty years, I play well.  Because I have studied music at the doctoral level I know a lot about music.  I can’t help it.  When I play I feel like I am stepping on people’s toes.  Is this because of the weak economy?  Is it because people are too uneducated to get what I do?  Is it that people have become so self-centered that they no longer are able to stop what they are doing and listen to someone else’s opinion?  Karioke was the beginning of the end for professional music.  Whoever decided that people should try to perform musically, no matter how un-trained they were, should be shot.  There was a time when music attempted to be artistic.  It attempted to transcend.  With these efforts came communication and communing with the public.  Now music sucks up to the public and sacrifices its artistry in a lame excuse of entertainment.  It has been emasculated.  This trend must be a component of P.C., a premise that has become a joke, but stealthy still is dictating our lives.  Slowly in America the freedoms and ideals human beings have forged and prolonged are being replaced with communist ideals.  We are being manipulated over time to become mindless, soulless, money-spending androids.  The reason why the economy in America is in the dumps is because we have no product.  Moving money around, while it worked for a while for many who became rich, no longer is a viable source of income.  The money all has been received, and those who have received it certainly are not putting it back into the American economy.  It is laundered in some Grand Cayman bank and sent elsewhere.  America has been abandoned, and I for one wish those rich people with the money would shut the fuck up.  There is no way the economy in America can be re-fueled by the poor.  It takes money to make money, and  those small business loans and credit lines have been absorbed by those crafty rich.  Until people are employed, a product is produced sold and bought, and that money circulates, there will be no revitalization of America’s economy.  The Grassroots roots program that started America will have to return.  Maybe the disappearance of those crafty rich is what is necessary.  History shows what is to come. 

What Actually is the American Economy?

            Twice only in my short life have I experienced mental illness.  Mental illness can be stealth.  In certain ways it can be more difficult to understand and treat than physiological illnesses.  That is why we have psychology and psychiatry.   What do I mean by “mental illness?”  Perhaps the term mental illness is inappropriate jargon.  If one becomes off balance in their daily routine for some unknown reason, is this mental illness?  Mental illness better clarified would mean an ailment or affliction that sustains the test of time.  It is not a temporary navigating of the stormy seas of everyday life.  It would be something that sticks around.  In professional terms that would be categorized as “chronic.”  Some deviant situation that recurs for a length of time likely could cause mental illness, because the mind loses the ability to remember what is healthy.  It would be often in the evolution of man the human mind and body have enabled themselves to survive by the process of accommodation.  When faced with a non-changing environment within which we are forced to operate for financial sustenance, our minds can accommodate the situation by adapting.  Upon scrutiny we may alter our moral or ethical codes to justify our economic freedom.  Is this freedom worth the social and psychological freedom we pursue as human beings?  More astutely characterized is this “American” freedom worth the psychological price?  We cannot be so shallow to recognize many other global cultures are not afforded any civil liberty, so the boundary between human and civil liberty must be defined.  One could use the United States Constitution as “ground zero.”  That could be why many foreign cultures seek asylum in the United States.  They understand, respect, and admire the rights outlined in our Constitution.  Sociologically the challenge is to understand human rights and how they have been defined and implemented by different political regimes.  What is an unacceptable environment?  In the field of labor, an entity that Abraham Lincoln considered synonymous with America, unions were organized to mitigate conditions of labor.  Today the term “labor union,” like many things in non-mainstream America, can elicit bipolar responses.  In recent decades America politically has become more polarized.  The term “mainstream” has gone undercover leaving the defining of our own society to ourselves.  We have become forced to become better educated on our own to survive in an increasingly hypocritical and often evil socio-economic construct.  Once afforded government-provided amenities have vanished.  With them has vanished our quality of life forcing us to buy the creature comforts our country once provided.  This has become the “New American Economy.”  We are living off one another, not for one another.  Ironically and erroneously Republicans shout, “Socialist” at our President, when their already-rooted communist economic infrastructure is the enemy. Grass roots artistic and intellectual aesthetics have become disguised and decreed unimportant.  We are experiencing a modern “Dark Ages” perhaps or perhaps not fueled by a teetering economy.  It is the prospectus of this economy that should be in question.  

An Artistic Healing of Neurosis

            Upon watching Woody Allen being interviewed by Jay Leno, it became perfectly clear that his comedy is a metaphor for Jewish neurosis.  A light bulb went off in my head!   I have been asking myself the last month how I am going to understand and heal my own neurosis.  His answer was comedy.  Over the decades after the obtainment of security (personal wealth) he was able to use his neurosis positively as a motivation for creativity.  Although misunderstood many would be surprised to know upon study artists do the same thing.  “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade!”   The argument presents itself that neurosis should not be necessary for great art.  Upon study it could be proven easily that it is this unresolvedness often that prompts attempted healing by use of artistic metaphors.  Artists study and understand, synthesize, and abstract their aberrations into artistic renderings.  The thorough study and expunging of their afflictions in the present helps to cure the eventual, longer lasting, emotional effects the neurosis may cause in the future.  What is interesting is, “Will an artist have able material with which to create if there is no such rift?”  Consequently are artists naturally and openly sentenced to lives of continual neurosis? 

            The primary and painful step in the healing process is attempting hypothetically to understand its cause.  A hypothetical or disassociated survey of one’s own history attempts to quell painlessly neurosis’s symptoms.  The artistic process on the other hand may use the emotional unrest of neurosis and funnel it into creative impetus.  While it could be understood traditionally only good emotion is used as motivation for art, history has shown that also art has been used for catharsis.  The film Goya’s Ghost provides a perfect example of such art.  The argument could be presented that creativity which is intelligently and skillfully channeled may only be an attempted diversion or escape from  neurosis.  It is now that the subconscious mind is brought into play.  As synthesizers humans should not be expected cognitively to understand the total minutia of their own psychology.  If we were then the Romantic period in art and literature may not have ever existed.  A balanced combination of Classicism and Romanticism could be viewed as a suitable recipe for the healing of neurosis. 

Ms. Saigon at CFRT

            Ms. Saigon has been around for quite a while.  I had never seen it.  I have played some of the music in cruise ship production shows, because I recognized a few tunes.  I did not do any mental preparation before seeing the show.  I did remember upon seeing the people-filled lobby, it takes some effort to absorb “live” musical theater.  It never is like a movie, where you can just relax and enjoy the drama.  Navigating the other patrons in my eyes is the largest obstacle to overcome when trying to enjoy a play. 

            I found out upon entering the theater the orchestra was on stage.  “Oh. Chicago,” I thought.  What was the purpose of that?  Then I noticed there were virtually no sets on stage.  There were only chairs on either side like two jury boxes or better yet, choir pews in a church.  For me this set the stage for what was about to transpire.  It would not be a run-of-the-mill musical.  It would be more like a straight play with music.  Then when the lights came down and the music began, I realized it was an operetta.  Like Les Miserable it was all music with no spoken dialog.  Then Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell came to mind.  It was kind of rock music with a little oriental flavor sprinkled in.  I didn’t like the first act at all.  The music seemed boring, vanilla, and long-winded.  It was bad Andrew Lloyd Webber.  I felt the characters were portrayed accurately.  Then I realized I had to meet and build a relationship with each character before I could begin to enjoy the show.  First there was a stoic quiet seventeen-year-old Vietnamese girl who was being forced to sell her body for money.  How could I empathize with her without a better setting of the scene?  I realized Ms. Saigon was a “Broadway” depiction of fairly serious subject matter.  It was attempting to do two things, reveal a truly dramatic story and entertain a theater audience.  It was Chicago, Oliver, and Sweet Charity in one.  There were similarities.  First Engineer reminded me of Fagen.  Instead of instructing degenerate boys how to “pick a pocket or two,” he was instructing young Vietnamese women how to have sex for money.  At the culmination of Act II he cemented the similarity to Chicago.  Engineer created a prospect of the story with a rousing solo production number called “The American Dream.”  “This was the lawyer in Chicago,” I thought to myself.  He was the comedic relief, calculated as such.  That felt like an old television show with a clown coming on intermittently to relieve the tension.  That works.  Then Cabaret came to mind.  A narrator was hosting the show.  That also works.  Immediately at the start of the show it is necessary quickly to set the scene.  There is no foreplay for the drama.  Ms. Saigon begins with a loud, aggressive, brothel scene except the drama is being played in front of a theater orchestra.  That was strange.  It made it intimate.  How could the mood be set for a sultry, sexy, alluring whorehouse in this environment?  It is a lot to expect your audience cold to warm up to such an intent.  People are eating or working or just living, and then immediately they are projected lingerie-clad young women gyrating on chairs.  Normally as an adult male I should enjoy this.  In a “theater” show where I am more accustomed to serious themes being explored, it was difficult to accept such a gratuitous offering.  I tried.  Still because I am fourty-nine, watching neighbor’s children doing local theater does not push my buttons.  I watched the G.I.’s dance with the girls and felt absolutely nothing of what they were intended to feel.  It was like watching high school kids spoon.  I was too old and did not have the time to waste dredging up a feeling that I knew would be pointless.  I watched hypothetically as the main character seemed to fall in lust with the young seventeen-year-old Kim.  I could be sympathetic to the situation, because I too had done the same thing.  I would never be so juvenile to fall in love with a prostitute, because it wouldn’t be love anyway.  It would be lust, or love based upon physical desire.  I have learned my lesson over time that this is not love.  For a helpless G.I. stationed in Vietnam, it is plausible he could be that naïve, like Radar in the television series M*A*S*H.  To solidify their purely physical attraction they kissed a lot on stage.  I find this also difficult to watch, because it does my psyche absolutely no good whatsoever.  Why would I want to watch this on stage?  It is personal and boring to me. 

            I began to understand the story as it approached the conclusion of the first Act.  Then a completely new and seemingly strange Tinkerbell-like character stepped from stage right.  She appeared while Kim reflected at her miniature romance alter which appeared repeatedly throughout the show.  Now there were two Kims, but one was wearing a black negligee and was surreal.  Upon reflection Ms. Saigon did attempt to offer you clues to its disguised unfolding story.  That was smart but also needed.  The music was not sufficiently strong to carry the play without sets.  It needed an ensemble of things to bring it off, and some of that was sheer effort.  Without getting distracted I must admit I was grievously disappointed in the pianist.  (Being a professional pianist myself for the last ten years aboard cruise ships, I am equipped to be able to make a value judgment about musicality.)  I felt the rest of the orchestra was capable, but this man failed to deliver the goods at the keyboard.  He did what most every pianist is doing these days, skating over the performance with no tactile connection to the piano.  His sound was thin, devoid of tone and bass, and flaccidly performed.  His limp waving wrists proved there was no physical connection to the music, only cognitive.  You could feel it.  Better yet you could not “feel” it, because there was nothing to feel.  Admittedly he had his hands full conducting the long and complex score.  Trying to cover both bases is too much for one person, but that often can get you the gig.  A solid, heart-felt piano performance was needed to bring the show up to CFRT standards.  I longed for both a bass fiddle or guitar, and a solid, meaty piano sound.  The piano truly was piano in this show, too much so.  It played a solidly subordinate role to the overpowering woodwinds.  That will be the drawback to placing your orchestra on stage.  I wondered again at the logic of it.  Did they not want to deal with sets?  The scenic designer at CFRT is top notch.  I remember a scene from Miss Saigon in a ship show that had the couple in a lofted treehouse- like bed.  It was effective.  This truly was a strange setting.  The sound quality was poor.  While the actors did need to be miked to be heard over the on-stage orchestra, the sound quality through the speakers was both harsh and often distorted.  I came to realize the show could have been produced acoustically.  That would have been fine.  By the end of the second Act, volume levels did reinforce this was a rock opera. 

            After suffering through the first Act, finally I began to be able to “feel” what was happening in the show.  It was a tough nut to crack and more attempts are needed to polish this retro piece.  I never thought a sole alto saxophone would provide the much needed warmth the show required to be intimate.