That Southern Feeling

All day today I have had this icky feeling.  I have felt it before, so it is not so unfamiliar.  The bottom line for me is I don't like it.  The reason simply is, it is not a feeling I consciously generate with my mind or soul.  It is a feeling I pick up from the environment.  Being an artist, which many will rebuke if you admit it, can be a curse.  I have learned to live cautiously because of it.  If you are able to feel varying emotions and use this in an art form, it can make you vulnerable to bad feelings.  To the average person I'm sure feeling bad is not uncommon.  When I reflect bad feelings surfaced during puberty.  The social training ground of junior high school surely will test the feelings of any teenager.  I had a crush on Stephanie Coverstone.  Then I had braces, was chunky, and was introverted.  Many thought I was just fucked up emotionally.  Not having friends exacerbates this emotional difficulty.  Imagine the nerd sitting alone in his room subject the the whims of his subconscious mind.  At a far greater level depression is an emotional disorder often that is caused simply by not recognizing and actualizing particular emotional responses.  If our naturally wired body is not allowed the freedom to respond instinctively to emotion, then these feelings become repressed.  I have experienced this on a grand scale.  When my depression came it lasted over four years.  I had absolutely no help healing it either.  I went to see a CEPHAS councilor.  He was a useless turd.  He listened but told me nothing.  I should have been prescribed drugs, but alas I had to tough it out.  How did I chose to confront this depression.  I moved to a state nine hours away and began working on a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Music Composition.  I didn't know how I became this way.  I just knew a series of events in my life were incredibly bad.  I lost my teaching job at the University of South Carolina, I lost my girlfriend, and that girlfriend vowed to hurt me in return for having lost interest in her.  She did hurt me.  I was a sucker, and like a little puppy dog I  chased her until I no longer could tolerate her emotional abuse.  She stood me up.  She verbally abused me.  She humiliated me in front of our former friends.  She stole from me.  This all came after three long fulfilling years of relationship while I was successfully teaching jazz studies at USC.  I fell like a rock all the way to the bottom.  My once almost celebrity-like musical status disappeared, and my reputation was smeared.  Not only that I wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Department of Music and explained they had made the wrong choice for the professor that was taking my interim teaching position.  My advisor, John Emche, died from a large brain tumor.  After graduating and two weeks before the fall semester was to begin, Dick Goodwin called me up and asked me to return to USC to fill in as a adjunct faculty member for one year. Of course I said yes.  Unfortunately after this year they filled the position with an Eastman graduate who had been working in the movie studios in Hollywood, CA.  It seems he had done some work on the soundtrack for the movie Ice Castles.  Instinctively I knew he was the wrong choice, but they made their decision.  It took three painful years for their choice to dig his own grave.  He did not receive tenure and was fired.  I came back to Fayetteville and truly was in dire straits.  I had not job, no woman, and no prospects.  Additionally I was moving back to a city that with which I no longer had connections or friends.  After a year of playing music in an original fusion band and applying to OSU, I moved to Columbus.  I did not adjust to the Midwest quickly.  In the midst of clinical depression I just toiled away writing music.  It took me three long years to affect change.  How did I accomplish this?  I had to physically move myself to a different state away from where I grew up.  There were several reasons why I chose Columbus.  First and foremost Dr. Emche received his D.M.A from OSU.  He turned out well.  Secondly Columbus was a capital city, so I knew there would be gigs.  I was right, and after a short while I was playing keyboards professionally around town with various bands.  The way I had to cure my depressions was changing my emotional profile.  That means consciously changing how I felt about certain things.  Primarily it meant the notion I had possessed my entire life about women had to change.  I was luckier than most people.  I found my true love at age fifteen.  For seven glorious years we lived the picture book romance of the early l980's.  I gave her many clothes and jewelry.  I pampered her, and I loved her unequivocally.      When we separated it was the single most difficult decision I had ever made.  I thought about it for a long time, but had to make the decision that we had grown apart.  The feeling I have right now is that of a jilted lover.  I feel bad.  I feel guilty.  I feel unwanted and unneeded.  I feel like I have very few options, and that these options are not being offered to me on purpose.  There is an outside contingency that is controlling my life making me feel this way.  Is this crazy?   I don't know, but I am intelligent enough to understand my own emotions.  In addition to the two reasons I mentioned earlier, there was another reason why I moved to the state of Ohio.  It was a rather far piece from North Carolina, eight and a half hours in the car to be exact.  I grew weary of this same feeling, being at the mercy of a populace that was controlling things.  I didn't realize this back then.  I just knew that for me to be successful as a musician I had to leave Columbia.  I didn't know then there was a CIA black list that actually black balled actors and musicians with the incorrect political affiliation.  It didn't occur to me that someone could hinder your vocational job opportunities.  That is because I never learned "the game."  That game is that southern feeling.  It is a camaraderie amongst people that are friends.  I never learned about this, because always I had a girlfriend with which I was making love.  That was enough for me.  I bypassed this system, this feudal hobnobbing that seems to be the necessary foundation of southern living.  I witnessed it in high school, but it was not appealing to me because the participants in this activity were ignorant.  They did not study or focus on their education.  Instead they socialized.  Many openly were ignorant.  I instead flourished as a musician.  Now living once again in the south, it must be "that" feeling is making me uncomfortable.  What I also know is fervently I dislike this system.  Simply it means you don't get your share of the pie without kissing the asses of those who have more than you do.  This is why I left Columbia.  Today I realize after having visited it recently, it exactly is the same as it was in l987.  It is a small university town controlled by the select few that have been working there for decades.  It is society.  If you don't fit in with them, "Hasta la vista, baby."  Fayetteville is exactly the same way.  It is southern.  I have traveled all over the world working in the cruise industry as a pianist.  I have seen many other countries, and each in a particular ways in my opinion socially were more advanced than North Carolina.  North Carolina is a redneck good-old-boy network of yahoos.  It makes me sick to my stomach.  For twelve years I have worked in the leisure industry and have been required to be friendly to everyone.  Now for the second time in my life, I find myself in a populace of people I do not like.  The first time it was attending St. John's Episcopal Church in the l970's.  I am Christian, and a respect people.  I know now that evil does exist.  It must be why we have so many infernal bible compounds in Fayettenam.  They are everywhere.  They are schools.  They are recreation centers.  They are hubs of activity that must be trying t o counteract this evil I feel in this feeling.  I was lucky enough to escape the raw and primitive existence of "Fire and Brimstone."  A ridiculous crazed preacher threatening that we would all burn in hell if he did not adhere to his chosen Biblical concepts.  Fuck that shit.  Still Fayetteville has not changed.  It is a downer.  It is oppressive.  Fouad Fakouri, the conductor of the Fayetteville Symphony, touts that we have the most envied Arts Council of any city.  Simply and naively that is because they have money, and they fund his orchestra.  Yes, they are a great asset to our city.  Afterall I am a doctoral level composer.  Still because of this southern feeling I feel alienated.  The Fayetteville Symphony which began in Dr. Grimes' living room used to be led by Harlen Deno and contained local school teachers and music professionals.  It was intimate, the way the Cape Fear Regional Theater used to be.  Both now have become commercial and generating revenue has become more of a necessity to their existence.  Back in the day before Equity actors, the people that made up that theater were local amateurs.  Because of that to me the shows were more meaningful.  I knew these people.  In addition I played in the pit orchestra for quite a few shows.  I  was the musical director of both "Five Guys Named Moe," and "Traveling Notes," a children's show penned by Scott Hurley and Cassandra Vallery.  To me it is not the same, and there is are reasons.  First with their accumulated trust money Bo Thorp has become a patron rather than its director.  They like the Arts Council have money now.  They used New York based equity actors and directors for the expanded season of shows.  Is watching a Broadway play the same as watching a play in a regional or local theater?  No.  It is a business.  Once I considered musical theater one of my great loves.  Now it makes me sick to my stomach.  Why?  Without fear of being chastised or ostracized, it is possible the arts in general have been influenced by homosexuality.  Because I am not homosexual, I have no need or desire to be subjected to complete strangers sexual proclivities.  Sexuality is a private matter.  I do not agree with those who are attempting to use it as a social platform.  I also agreed with past president Bill Clinton's  policy of "Don't ask, don't tell."  It worked.  I have been forced to deal with this issue in my professional music life, because homosexuality is common in production show casts.  Often all four of the production singers are gay.  I don't agree with using the arts as a social platform for homosexuality.  It does not make sense to me.  There is one thing that supports a connection of homosexual preference to music.  I know this because I have been subject to it repeatedly.  Because I am an artist and use music as an expression of my feelings, I became aware that gay men seemed to be the only people who could understand, feel, or sympathize with my expression.  When I was emoting while playing the piano, women were not interested.  It was the gay men that seemed to understand that particular depth of emotional expression.  Was this because of their persecution and related strife for being gay?  I do believe that suffering can and does translate into art.  Many think that jazz would not exist without the experience of American slavery.  Would musical theater also not exist without homosexuality?  I enjoy the movie "It's De-Lovely" a lot.  Richard Rogers is the one man of which I am jealous.  I am angry that having moved back to Fayetteville I am having recurring feelings of frustration, missed opportunity, and social stagnation resulting from class.  It feels like the dark ages, this southern thing.  Columbus was not that way, and I met many people that had lived in Fayetteville or Ft. Bragg before moving to Columbus.  They each said, "You can't make any money in Fayetteville."  There is too much old money.  It doesn't flow to allow new economic activity.  I always have known this.  When I rode my bicycle for the first time around our neighborhood a few nights ago, it was surprising to see what appeared to be gay men.  Then I began to wonder that this feeling I have is related.  I know it is not from me.  I know that as an artist and empath I can feel others feelings strongly if I am not careful.  At the age of 51 no longer do I have the desire to assert my masculinity.  I am comfortable with it.  I have too much self respect to chase women.  I do not like southern bells.  I do not like marrying for money.  I do not like "man-eaters."  All of these things exist in the south, so now it is easy to understand who I am and what I believe in are not supported in the south.  This culture has changed for the worse as has the commercial music industry.  We have regressed in human scope and wisdom.  Unlike other countries that remain viable, liberal, and humanistic, America covertly has changed far from her constitutional roots.  It must be it is all about the money.  When money takes precedence over people there is a problem.  When we no longer feel strongly about educating our children, there is a problem.  When we take away the underlying social structure for children to interact and grow, we have a problem.  When we put a cell phone in the palm of every youth, we have a problem.  When a city council outlaws skateboard and bicycles from downtown, we have a problem.  We have become bigoted.  We have become elitist.  We have become inhuman.  While I do appreciate and applaud the wealth of Fayetteville for renovating downtown, I don't agree with eminent domain.  I don't agree with squashing the little guy for big bucks.  There are things of interest other than mansions, and money, but they are dwindling.  The railroads seem to run the world, and they are not sentimental steam engines carrying people. They are corporate monopolies in the Fortune 500 heating our all ready taxed planet with diesel prime movers and spewing micro dust from their exhausts.  It is non stop, but no one around me seems to notice the brutal low frequency standing wave created from a running locomotive.  I don't like it much, so I guess I am going to have to make a change, again.