Thanksgiving is Over

Thanksgiving is over.  The landscape that is looming around me seems like a minefield laced with altercation.  We have from now until the evening of December 25th to assemble all of our Christmas decorations and presents.  It has been programmed for decades fueling retail in America.  Does the Christmas season, the celebration of Jesus' birth, still have relevance to the economy in America?  Its impact greatly has waned in recent years.  I wish I could remember the exact date in history the Christmas season was rendered moot because of economic stress and inequality.  For years wages have not kept up with inflation.  Corporate America vivaciously out sourced our jobs and thus our incomes to the Indians and the Chinese.  They would work for a small percentage of our wages which at one time were a part of the "American Dream."  We in America unlike third world countries once were afforded civil liberties, economic opportunities, and a social security that long have been left by the wayside.  The turmoil of Viet Nam in America has returned.  The glamour of war has worn thin, and the reality of war starkly has presented itself.  The Veteran's Administration like most governmental social program grossly was unprepared.  Like FEMA floundered at the onset of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, the VA like our entire Congress has abandoned the citizens they are supposed to represent.  With indignation white supremacists fully have empowered themselves over the rest of the country inviting a coup.  How else will the corruption stop?  It if humorous to me that these staid, robotic, antagonists feel they are immune from such a thing.  How long will a comfortable nest in Washington's congressional buildings shield them from reality?  Certainly an angry looting mob will have no success intimidating Washington.  Such an entity only will reinforce their legislative power over us.  Republicans only defeat Democrats with their encyclopedic knowledge of the law.  They manipulate language to create dissent in legislation meant actually to aid the citizens of America.  They do not want to aid the citizens of America.  They want to continue to empower themselves at all cost.  How long can this continue?  How long will this continue?  The contingency capable of electing democrats to Congress failed to show up at the polls.  After witnessing an angry mob in Ferguson Missouri burn their own town, my opinion about some minorities in America has been sealed.  I have been witnessing it first hand for several years where I live.  I have tried my best to believe that all men are created equal.  Living in America today it is evident to me that while we may have been created equal, many have been left behind in terms of what must be education.  I can't believe the ignorance I see daily.  I feel very isolated and also persecuted.  If I wear the wrong thing to the grocery store, I am a sitting duck for grifters.  They see someone not dressed like a ghetto rat or a construction worker, and they assume you have money to spare.  I consciously have to remind myself not to wear any of my clothing purchased while working on cruise ships.  It is too happy.  It is not ostentatious.  It is not flamboyant.  It represents something other than the dire straights facing most Americans today.  I enjoy fitting into the masses.  I like living in a trench.  Today I like consciously to discard most of the things that are important to me, because it makes my emotional life more tolerable.  When I try to be creative like I once was, it creates a drowning wrinkle in the local status quo.  I feel it wrap around me like the angle of death.  If I am sleeping, unguarded, and subconscious often I feel physical pain on my body.  I awake to this most days with an intimidating nightmare fresh in my mind.  Imagine two (or rather one) distinct source that has the ability to bully my creative being and stalk me in my sleep.  This is why I choose to avoid at all cost the musical practices that have sustained my mind and soul for fifty-two years.  I do not want any longer my creative impetus and emotional output to become entertainment for the man.  This is not what music used to be.  A perfect metaphor for this sacrilege was a gig I played recently at a local country club.  Unbeknownst to me one member of the quartet gravely had been ill the three weeks prior to the job.  Evidently he still was reeling from this strain of flu.  The scotch didn't help.  When we finished our first tune of the night, after we had stopped playing he continued for almost two minutes with his eyes closed oblivious.  The entire evening he phased in and out turning the beat around, dropping out, and playing on his on.  I performed in spite of this intrusive stimuli.  Suddenly in a few minutes my job of playing quality jazz music on the piano to the best of my ability changed to trying to play quality jazz music against almost insurmountable odds.  My thoughts were distracted from my primary responsibility of remembering and playing tunes.  Instead they at a second to second level became desperate trying to hold together a song being performed in two different meters.  Constantly I had to listen to this debacle and second by second choose with whom I was going to play.  It was extremely unpleasant.  It was not so unpleasant to me as a player.  It was embarrassing to the audience who were sitting so close to us.  Interestingly at the end of the evening the ultimate irony took place.  Like the man does to us each and every day, these people enjoyed the set like it was being performed normally.  The drama that was ensuing was entertaining and gratifying to them.  With no thought of the strife and difficulty that was being placed upon me, I was put into my place once again.  No need to preach to the choir.  Suck it up and take your money home.  I believe that in modern American entertainment this has become the chosen vehicle.  No longer is art important, because that means that we must acknowledge an artist as being empowered and thus monetarily valuable.  The man does not want this anymore.  They made a conscious decision to kill the honest and creative force of American music and replace it with blasphemy.  It seems our entire nation is operating at this level low.  Simply turn on a reality show on the tube.  

Smooth Jazz

Never have I really liked the term "Smooth Jazz."  Vaguely I remember it seeping into the public consciousness in Columbus Ohio back in the late l990's.  It's major artist was trumpeter Rick Braun.  Having played cruise ship in Australia, I am familiar with the Sydney pop opera scene.  I have played piano for scores of these artists, and I understand the repertoire.  There is a sentiment present in the music that is used as a vehicle for music performance.  If the artist taps into that potential, the success of their show is assured.  In this way the term "standard" can be understood.  There is a standard repertoire in varying styles of music.  In Motown inevitably you will play "My Girl,"  "I'll Be There," "Can't Help Myself," and others.  In Pop Opera inevitably you will play "Nessun Dorma," "Granada," and others.  In Swing you will play the Rat Pack's repertoire.  It's not rocket science.  Aside from these mainstream and reliable sources, there are other styles of music.  I would call these radio styles, because they are recognized by Billboard Magazine and other record labels.  It is rare to hear this music on a ship, unless a particular artist is guesting on a charter cruise.  Where does "Smooth Jazz" fit in? This term was coined specifically to promote careers in music.  It's roots are in music that is more developed and sophisticated than itself.  It is a derivative.  Derivative.  Pop is derivative.  It seems that taking an artistic product and dumbing it down for the public has become vogue in America.  There was a time when this was not necessary, but then again America used to be an adult country.  Now we are a nation of adolescents, and adolescents living in the year 2014 because of the failure of public education have no knowledge of America's art music.  Perhaps to play music it is necessary to dumb down what once was an acceptable level of performance.  What I object to in Smooth Jazz is that the value of the music is secondary to the Razzle Dazzle.  While in most instances the music is good enough, it as an amalgam of songs from varying artists that satisfy a chosen need.  The need is that the music must be a vehicle for a particular performer.  While this obviously is not uncommon in the music business, traditionally songwriters and arrangers were much more involved in the process.  This is not the case with most Smooth Jazz.  It is interesting to contrast Smooth Jazz with two leading jazz fusion bands that have been pioneering in music.  What is the difference?  The difference is their repertoire.  Both the Jeff Lorber Fusion and Spyro Gyra each play their own original material.  Not only do they play their own original material, that original material is skillful and highly developed.  It is what has ensured their successes as bands in America.  This nugget of information clarifies my ongoing rant against pop music in America.  The once thriving and supported venue of songwriting has dissipated.  Musical composition and arranging has taken a backseat to an army of wannabe performers who have circumvented the processes necessary for becoming an artist.  When I listen to the Jeff Lorber Fusion, which I have done since 1980 I hear a highly developed compositional sense that is coming from a specific place in Jeff Lorber's mind and soul.  He crafts songs, verses, choruses, and solos that compositionally all fit together like a sonata.  His songs simply are not merely vehicles for personal gratification.  While he enjoys playing them they owe a debt to other entities in this world besides selfish performers.  We live in an artificial age in America that has been ushered in by Steve Jobs.  Effectively he shifted our consciousness as a nation from humanity to cyborg.  We have fused with our machines rendering the real humanities extinct.  What is going to happen when the electromagnetic vortices in the earth erupt disabling our electronic systems?  While bells, whistles, and apps are entertaining they in no way ever will be able protect mankind from the world's destiny.  In my eyes just as I have changed my opinion about Barry Gordey's Motown, it makes the survivalists of America a little more respectable.  Are you going to entrust the security of your future life to a microprocessor?  As well musical artists should not entrust their careers to cheaply made and produced children's lullabies.  The composition lives in the time it takes to compose it.  This is what life is, yet we have been programed as an attention deprived, violent, and sexually confused child.  Adult life as we know it is over in America, and I don't like it much.  

Pop Music, The Hollow Egg of America

I am at an unusual point in my life.  I am somewhat of a caregiver.  Not completely, but now I know how it feels.  I cook, and oddly enough I enjoy it.  Cooking, despite all odds and except when done poorly and without thought, always is a triumph of the human spirit.  I guess the phrase, "You are what you eat" really is true.  Music on the other hand now offers me nothing.  Ironically it has served me my entire life, yet now I cannot remember why ever I pursued music.  A large part of it was selfishness.  I wanted to be successful.  I wanted a mate.  I wanted to be popular.  Largely it worked, but I can't remember any of it anymore.  I can't remember performing music in my youth, and because I have matured into an adult now I pursue music for different reasons.  As you age you become so familiar with yourself that you tire of yourself.  I am not interesting to me anymore.  Therefore the gift or rather voice of music I have possessed my entire life has become silent.  There has to be a reason for you to pursue music.  It is a need to express emotion and thought.  You have to have something to say.  Currently I don't.  In the year 2014 with our current socioeconomic and political systems, I have no desire to say anything because it will be met with deaf ears.  What I have said during my life time has been rendered anachronistic.  I am out-of-date.  The voice of jazz has changed again.  I observed this first hand when the British Invasion and Elvis Presley ushered in Rock 'n' Roll in America.  Traditional swing could not help but be effected by the new rhythm.  Slowly over time old school swing became anachronistic, and the aggressive shuffle of the new music found itself the new foundation of jazz music.  Rock 'n' Roll cribbed jazz with nary a tilt of the hat.  The sentences in jazz music became subsidiary to a mindless droning quarter note time feel.  The actual conversation, the content of jazz, became the whore of what was intended to be a musical dance form.  Always I have said instead of disrespecting America's only true art form, why not just do something else?  The cruise industry is notorious for this disrespect, and I have dealt with it in some capacity since beginning in the cruise industry in 2002.  I have come to terms with this callous and often homosexual disrespect of American jazz.  I have learned that the expression in real jazz music does not represent the aesthetic of homosexuality.  I have tried to separate music from this choice, but I cannot.  It is part of the cause of the disrespect of jazz.  Jazz has been exploited because it is there.  It is a large body of work that is well known as America's unique offering to the field of music.  Just as I feel one's sexuality should not be a platform for one's existence, I feel jazz music deserves greater respect than being used as a whore.  That is exactly what it is today, but in a different way than Rock 'n' Rolls influence.  Now it is being exploited as pop music.  Modern jazz musicians including iconic figures are now playing jazz with a different rhythmic feel.  They are using the feel and thus technique of realizing pop.  Over time I have come to understand that this is a conscious effort.  Modern jazz musicians explicitly know that old school jazz fails with the greater public.  Why is this?  It is because we have grown ignorant and immature as a populace.  This also has been a conscious effort.  It became a conscious effort during George W.' presidency with or without his knowledge.  Almost all of Saul Alinsky's predictions have been implemented with the education and respect of America's youth first on the chopping block.  Systematically and purposely the government has undermined public education and began a campaign to exploit money from America's youth.  They also have become whores.  It seems America is anxious to fuck anything and everything she can for monetary gain.  Posthumously George Carlin still speaks of this ill in his comedy sketches.  He talks often of being screwed by the man or Uncle Sam.  In my short lifetime I had managed to avoid this sentiment until now.  Now I feel it, and I feel it most deeply in the exploitation of my chosen vocation, music, specifically jazz music.  It infuriates me that no living person today seems to be aware that the jazz music being marketed today is fake.  It is pop disguised as jazz.  It is using the language of jazz for a different purpose than traditional jazz.  Traditional jazz like many American traditions was serious.  It was adult.  It dealt with real everyday issues of the American situation.  It dealt with civil rights.  It dealt with persecution.  It dealt with slavery possibly at its root element.  Slavery.  Slavery is not a happy subject especially today.  Certainly it is not a sentiment that openly will be embraced by the music industry.  The same could be said for the blues.  It is not often we hear blues music anymore, and yet one of the most prolific and successful rock bands of all time, Led Zeppelin, used the feeling of the blues prominently in their music.  The feeling of pop music for a while was an enigma to me, but then I realized what it was.  It is vanity.  It is a vanity that openly and happily exploits anything and everything it possibly can from the body of American music.  It solely is used for personal gain.  Selfishly discarding the content, value, and talent of artistic music it purports to be the same, but it is not.  It is an eggshell that masquerades as the egg.  It ignores the processes necessary for producing the egg.  It is a hollow egg, but it seems few people today including our miseducated and brainwashed youth take the time to confront the egg itself.  They will be disappointed, because there is nothing there.  We have become a fascist country.  It only was a matter of time before the influences of Communism made their way across our great oceans. It is not a very long leap across the Bering Straight.  Unsettlingly Vladimir Putin has returned to the Presidency in Russia.  Many are predicting a new cold war.  Fascism has entered America the same way it entered Italy, through fascist leaders.  The timeline can be traced back  to the George W. Bush presidency.  During this time warmongering became a main tenant of American existence.  Not only did war sanction privileged presidential executive powers, it fueled Haliburton.  Both our president and vice-president instigated fascism in American politics.  We have yet to recover, but their message bellows on with the pointless widespread criticism of Barak Obama.  American politics like American pop music is a hollow eggshell.  There no longer is an egg, and it seems to be wanted.  The question must be asked how are we going to survive as a nation with no philosophy?  How are we to survive with no unifying principles upon which to live our lives?  It will devolve into anarchy and the government will be overthrown.  I guess it was just a matter of time before European historical precedents came to America.  First we must get rid of pop music, the propaganda of fascism.  Only then do we have a chance.  

Historical Television

The Bob Newhart Show.  The Mary Tyler Moore Show.  The Partridge Family.  The Brady Bunch.  Love American Style.  Man with a Suitcase.  The Wild Wild West.  Star Trek.  You could plan your week by what was on television in the afternoon and evening. Each of these seminal shows had music recorded by live musicians.  This was before the advent of the PC and the MIDI sequencer.  There were no VST plug ins.  I remember when Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine first used the sequencer on stage.  There was no looking back.  I remember that a record executive heard that quantized rhythm, and decided that it was the new direction of music.  Now we are stuck with pop.  Not only is my adversary, my foe, and my opponent the defense of America, it is the musically illiterate.  Today that is just about everyone.  Each day I wake I want to crawl back into bed, close my eyes, and live in my subconscious mind.  It is more pleasant than this world.  When I time my sleep correctly, I dream of much more interesting things than with what I am confronted each day.  Driving.  Surrounded by the uneducated.  Buying.  It is a fruitless life.  When I dream I solve problems.  I play politics.  I fight for my life.  Whence these scenarios come I do not know.  Only I can think that they are things that may transpire in the future.  Writing music entitles me to nothing.  I have boxes full of music.  I have music that will become America's next chapter of contemporary classical music.  It has not been written before.  It is the natural evolution of modern music.  It cements in contract the sentiments of America or at least one American that has witnessed the twentieth century.  When I was motivated to be a musician, how did I progress?  These days I am self-deprecating.  My fingers are stiff.  My physical kinesthesia is nonexistent, because of standing waves in my home.  The motions of my extremities once that were comforting and provided me musical skill are dormant.  I can't feel.  With no music in the environment and absent kinesthesia, it is easy to understand why I am depressed.  These used to be the things that made me happy.  Without them, what is left?  What is a human being without vibration?  Emotion.  Thought.  Electrical activity that controls the organs.  It is easy to understand why people are killing each other.  When you take away the necessary systems of the human body to function, then what is left?  What is left are the empty eyes of serial killers with no conscience.  Zombies.  Republicans.  What I need is sleep.  I want to recharge.  I want to escape.  

The Death of the Sound Stage

I have been musically depressed lately.  Again I feel like a broken record.  Perhaps a broken record is the wrong analogy.  Maybe I should say a scratched record.  A scratch in the vinyl grooves causes your turntable's needle to get stuck repeating one particular passage of music.  Often I feel this way when criticizing America's music industry or rather lack of a music industry.  I am so out of touch with commercial music I don't know what is happening.  I have read a missive published on the world wide web that purports to tell it like it really is.  The bottom line I guess is in the internet, the MP3, and streaming music services have put record companies out of business.  I don't know if record stores still exist today.  I have not been to the mall lately to see if Fye still is there.  Rather than singing the ills of pop music again, I rather would simply explain the differences in America's music industry from past to present.  It is easier to understand why I am musically depressed.  It is tangible.  First having been born in l962, I am old enough to remember the twentieth century.  Because I have studied music at the collegiate level, something I have forgotten, I know first hand how music and its industry has changed in America.  While I assume other cultural practices also have diminished or become extinct, still I fail to understand how this has happened to music.  Looking at the film and television industries it becomes a little clearer.  Both of these mediums at one time largely used music as a major component of their product.  It was natural.  The marriage of music to drama heightened their achievement.  Only can I say that music education in America must have faltered.  At one time in my life I was involved in academia.  I have been a Graduate Teaching Assistant twice and an adjunct professor.  Also I have completed all of my course work for a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition at The Ohio State University.  This chapter of my life far is in the past.  Barely can I remember it, because I do not have things in my immediate surroundings that support it.  While I do listen to WCPE and my own recordings at times, still I am deprived of positive music reinforcement.  That huge vacuum is coming from television.  When I grew up television was rife with cutting edge commercial music.  There was a viable industry, and thus competition was high.  This created a vital musical canvass upon which our lives were drawn.  Music was like air.  It was all over Saturday morning cartoons.  It was in prime time.  It was in made-for-television movies.  Do these still exist?  I am so digusted with modern television that I am depressed.  During my life I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by high level creative music.  It was on the radio, and it was on television.  Just to name a few television shows that had REAL music, there were crime dramas.  I mean real crime dramas.  Tony Baretta, Barnaby Jones, Joe Mannix, The Rockford Files are just a few, and I almost can remember the theme music from each of these.  Highly they were influenced by jazz music and included elements of funk and soul.  Quincy Jones was a large influence on this music.  Off the top of my head I can think of two African-American shows with theme songs written and produced by Q.J.  Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and Sanford and Son.  I cannot think of one theme from modern television programming that sticks in my ear.  That is why television today is not effective.  We would be better to put our TVs in the garbage bin, just as we would be happier never logging into Facebook.  Still it is a hard habit to break.  Always I have been a late night TV junkie, but that is changing.  For several weeks there has been absolutely nothing worth watching on my 70 some cable channels.  Nothing.  Time Warner's stock shares should be at rock bottom because their programming is terrible.  At one point it was reported that the internet was responsible for the demise of television.  Possibly this is true, but it doesn't seem possible.  As Zuckerberg struggles to sell advertising to satisfy his stock holders, are others streaming television through their iPads?  I do know that the bandwidth on these newer devices allows this feature.  I have not yet delved into this practice, because I do not agree with the iPhone.  Watching Americans staring at their palms instead of interacting with one another truly is ridiculous.  With compromised eyesight from the disease kerataconus and two resultant cornea transplants,  I want my text bigger, not minute.  There are other underlying issues with music other than its absence.  Music as I have expressed before no longer possesses the sonic capabilities it once had.  That because the airwaves in America all ready are filled with noise.  Not all of it is audible.  Resultantly music that once was capable of making us feel good no longer as the same power.  While I must digress at Mr. Stravinsky's guffaw that music is not related to human emotion, it is.  It is surprising to me one of my favorite composers would think such a thing.  This traditionally has been on of the thing music offers to humanity.  In jazz terms let's say the ballad and the up tune.  In music theory let's say tension and release.  I feel ridiculous qualifying the validity of music, something that has been deemed a Liberal Art since ancient Greece.    Then again America did not have a contingency that wanted to eradicate God and change history.  It is a shite state of affairs.  Fundamentally quality of life in America now must be purchased, and it is expensive.  The people of America are miserable, at least they are in my town.  We are an exception living in the refuse of the world's largest military complex.  With its presence comes its supporting infrastructure, and that is planes, trains, and automobiles.  It is non stop, and with their noise music does not stand a chance.  Perhaps this is why music has waned so dramatically.  I feel it.  Instinctually I have absolutely no desire or motivation to pursue music.  As jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollens now says, music is pointless.  He believes he wasted his life.  I will not go so far as to say I have wasted my life, but in retrospect now I would have chosen a more needed vocation.  I am more intrigued with cooking these days, because you get to eat what make.  It used to be that music would make you feel good, and that feeling would translate over a longer period of time.  That is not happening today. The dynamic of our air is so polluted, music does not stand a chance of creating vibration anymore.  Once it did.  Unless this changes, there will be no musical renaissance.  We will continue to stare at our palms while relying upon a cyber existence.  All ready this process has taken over my life.  My waking hours are so overridden by the military industrial complex, my soul no longer possesses the will to extend my own humanity.  I have given up, because the opponent to too large.  The defense of America is my adversary, my foe, and my opponent.  With no substance or life, what are we defending?  All ready America is a shell of her former self.  We have no products, and the products we once did have been been eradicated.  Once we had music.  

Evil on Earth

For anyone interested and those all ready familiar with the book of Revelations, some shit is going to go down in the future.  I was confused about the Second Coming of Christ.  I mistakenly thought Satan was going to make an appearance on earth vested in a human being.  There is no second coming of Satan.  All ready he is here.  All ready he is manifested in millions of human beings.  I have been in a spiritual vacuum working in the cruise industry.  It is not a vacuum devoid of spirituality, it is a vacuum of love that seems impenetrable by the evil which surrounds me daily in America.  I am scolded by my family that working in this industry for over a decade has sheltered me from reality.  It is not so.  Contrarily I have both lived and worked in some of the most upstanding places in the world.  There must be a better word, but to find it I must point of the shortcomings of my own country, America.  There are many, and these many were not always in existence.  Truly as an intelligent and Christian nation we have faltered.  I can't believe my eyes and ears most of the time.  Each day when I wake in a secure paid for home, I feel less secure than floating in the ocean in a big hunk of metal.  Why?  The reason is not only am I working in the hospitality industry, but I am working in an environment that is humane.  Not only does it earn its revenue from its guests, truly it cares about their wellbeing.  It would be easy to say that this care comes from a desire for revenue, and it would be true to some extent.  Surprisingly unlike the United States, people cruising are well adjusted happiness seeking beings.  They want to live a stress free happy life.  I don't find that to be the case in America.  It used to be.  Instead of seeing well adjusted Christian people I see violent evil people.  I am around people like I was in junior high school that want your life to be less pleasant than it is.  They scream sour grapes around seemingly content people.  I see people who enjoy inflicting pain and sorrow on others.  I see greed.  I see  racism.   It is exactly the same as it was when I grew up here in the late l970's before Ronald Reagan became president.  Luckily I was able to experience the glory of the l980's, a decade when an actor was  President.  Did it make a difference in the arts?  Yes.  the l980's were a pinnacle decade of artistic expansion.  Film, music, and commodities were at a high point and to many peoples' surprise Trickle Down Economics worked.  It worked because the money that merchants and manufacturers made was invested back into the products and their means of production.  It was not filed away in some bank in Grand Cayman to mold and strangle the U.S. economy.  For the economy to function marginally, capital needs to flow.  It cannot sit unused in the wealthys' banks.  The 80's were a decade of love and romance.  The entire country circulated around this heterosexual interaction.  It was the basis of life.  Who cared about money if there was not romantic interest with which to share?  American has changed.  I do not see this romance anymore.  Films, music, and products no longer reflect romantic sentiments.  I think that this particular sentiment no longer exists in mainstream America.  We have become jaded and rude.  I myself, although I want such a thing, am having trouble justifying my sentiment.  My conscience tells me to give up on it, and I may.  The music I have written is based upon this feeling.  It is rife with emotion, both happy and sad.  It really is pure emotion in sound.  It is intimacy, intimacy I have been deprived of since working in the cruise industry.  I don't mind.  It has been a trade off.  I was able to find sexual fulfillment from prostitutes, and spiritual and artistic fulfillment from music.  Now I have neither, and I am unhappy.  I live in a country who has discarded music from its consciousness, and who has become so ridiculously far right that any human need or weakness is eradicated.  Not knowing what puritan roots are, it must be what I am experiencing.  It is not human.  The force that has occupied America plainly and simply is trying to eradicate God.  What an idea.  How can any human being have an ego so large that they entertain the idea of usurping God?  I can't help but think that I wish He would show up and defend Himself.  I am sure many also feel this way.  Where is God when you need Him?  I do not have room to complain, because I actively do not worship.  Still I have a deep and great reverence for the presence of God in human life.  We cannot exist without It.  I thank Him occasionally for good things that happen, and usually they are small.  I understand I am not fulfilling my duty as a Christian by worshipping God in church each Sunday.  Still I believe and need Christ.  It is because I have come to realize there is evil all around me.  While I have gotten better at warding off Satan, in others it feels like a lost cause.  It is everywhere.  Certainly President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are the only symbols of God tangibly I can recognize.  Television is rife with untruth and hypocrisy.  I turn on a news program and see Congressmen lying to the American people.  It is strong, and I don't like it.  I miss my vacuum of the cruise industry, because I have not felt cared for in two years.  I am the good guy.  I write real music.  I am an artist.  The music I have written satisfies the requirements of art.  It will sustain the test of time.  As much music does not attempt, my work synthesizes many fundamental American ideals.  In ways it is nationalist.  Like Tchaikovsky's work, it represents patriotic sentiments.  Since 2005 I have experienced life away from America, and have written more American music than many composers.  I do not market it, because our country is too ignorant to understand it.  It's a bitch being ahead of your time, and perhaps the course history has shown that other countries will be more capable of understanding it.  It is not a hollow shell of pop music.  It is the sorrow of Handel, the joy of Copland, and the machismo of Beethoven.  It is alive, full, and human, something that the American people are not.  It is disappointing being back in America.  

A Broken Record

Each and every time I blog about this subject, I feel like a broken record.  A broken record just repeats itself ad nauseam until finally the motor dies.  The music on the records fails to reach its audience.  The question reveals itself as, "Why?"  Why does it fail to reach its audience?  If the record repeats itself in a time loop reiterating its message again and again, then the question must be asked, "Why isn't its message being heard, understood, and acted upon?"  I am finding this out firsthand.  The midterm elections in America has presented this question.  "Why isn't the message being heard, understood, and acted upon?"  For the election the answer is simple.  It had the lowest voter turn out of 37% since the l940's.  As I blogged earlier, without Barack Obama's rousted minority vote, this contingency was not interested in securing the democrats their majority in the Senate.  Damn.  All they had to do was go to the polls and vote.  It is interesting no one was inclined to do so.  I was for the first time in North Carolina in many years.  I wanted to cast my vote for the politicians on the ballot who merited an opportunity to lead.  Fully I researched and chose my candidates, and fully they lost.  A second contingency, the Republicans, bought the election.  They abstractly bought the election.  What I still do not know is if the Electoral College was involved in these mid term elections.  If they were, it is easy to understand where that 100 million dollars of dark money went in North Carolina.  Certainly it did not go into the making of flimsy paper and metal campaign signs.  Possibly a portion of that dark money did line the pockets of local television networks for smear ads.  Would the Republicans have won if more people voted?  Probably not.  We have no one to blame except those who were too disinterested to care anymore.  The message was not heard by the minority vote, or they turned a deaf ear.  Positively the contingency still is in existence, the minority vote or the democratic vote.  This vote is important, because it is unveiling itself to me as the Christian vote.  The other vote, the Republican vote, metaphorically is has begun to represent pop music.  When I use the word pop, I do not mean popular.  This definition in fact is extremely undefined in the history of music.  Some believe the word pop does mean popular.  It doesn't in my eyes historically, because they are many other varied styles of music that have been popular over the decades in America.  Disco is one.  It was extremely popular during the decade of the l970's and with the release of the film Saturday Night Fever.  While the music of the Bee Gee's is pop oriented, disco spawned a large catalog of hit songs from other bands, producers, and record labels.  It is not pop from the stylistic musical definition.  I have explained this repeatedly in previous blog posts ad nauseam.  I had to explain it to come to understand it myself as a professional pianist.  Never in my forty years of playing the piano did the musical style "pop" ever present itself to me.  I am gracious or was until a few years ago.  Then it seemed everywhere I listened there was this other style.  In short the rhythmic style is a direct metaphor for the technique of strumming the guitar.  When one mindlessly moves their forearm in a reciprocating motion over the strings of the guitar, this rhythmic feel is created.  It is mindless.  Anyone can do it.  With no thought, idea, feeling, or concept almost anyone can make this motion.  In a fell swoop this motion became the voice of the Republican party.  Mindless.  Like the way they have failed to govern, the message is empty.  There is no message.  It has been difficult to get my mind wrapped around mindlessness.  Only it means that a sheltered, instinctual, selfish contingency has adopted a survival only plan.  With no message except sheer survival of their party, they parade like mindless zombies.  They do not know their plan, because there is none.  The only thing that matters subconsciously is survival and domination of an opposing species.  Perfectly the genre of pop music represents the Republican message.  It cannot change minds.  It cannot teach.  It fully is impotent.  I have been wondering whence this came, and now I know.  The same contingency that has tried to erase God from America is singing the songs of pop.  That is because real music, God, and christianity are the same thing.  Without this spirituality there is no substance.  There is no love.  A contemporary classical piece I composed in Italy is entitled "Genova."  It was inspired by the landscape upon which I gazed as my ship sat its port.  Like most of Italy the architecture was breathtaking.  How ancient artisans sculpted that rock so ornately is beyond me.  There were domes and bell towers.  As a skilled composer easily I was able to paint a musical picture of Genova.  When I played, recorded, and listened to it, conspicuously it was devoid of the entity of which I am describing.  It was devoid of spirituality.  It was beautiful.  It was haunting.  It was modern, but it unike most of my other pieces lacked the feeling of God and thus humanity.  I should correct myself, because recently there has been a diversion.  The feeling traditionally associated with God and love now has become the enemy for the Republican party.  That is why pop music is their chosen voice.  In the greatest masquerade in musical history, politicians have ruined the art of music.  As they bought the presidential election in Florida through the court system, also they decided and castrated real popular music.  Simply and mindlessly they just knew with no reason they had to steal the balance of money from popular musicians.  They just decided no longer would average medium income people have a pot in which to piss.  We have not recovered from this economic crisis.  When I harp about the ills of pop music, now I will harp about zombie Republicans.  At least I can understand why my broken record falls on deaf ears.  They can't get it.  When you can't get it, destroy it.  Many soap box shouters on television blame God.  Why has he abandoned us?  I ask myself the same question.  Why the hell does my adult life have to be fettered with the annihilation of my chosen profession?  It is a daunting question of which I have no answer.  My mind is so confused that it shuts down much like the Republicans.  Was I lucky because of my studies to understand the precept of spirituality in music is necessary?  It really is the same thing.  Music is poetry.  Then again certainly America no longer is poetic. There was another hugely popular style of music that rhymed.  Its basis was that of rhyming messaging.  This rhyme scheme meant the lyrical content of Hip Hop had to be thought about.  Above that it had to be artistic.  Without defining artisty again, we can say for certain pop music is the emptiest shell.  It is this way for a reason.  Anyone can do it.  There need be no real knowledge.  Therefore it should be free.  I cannot think of another thing in history that deserves such treatment.  Of all things Republicans could decide would be devoid of value, why couldn't it be milk, or coffee, or gasoline?  Why music?  It is because music carries the spiritual message of God, someone they are unwilling to worship.  Instead like the rest of use they want to dominate.  When one understands such behavior it is more palatable.  We are dealing with something less than animal.  Animal have feelings and instincts.  Like most of mother nature they are filled with joy and love.  It won't be long before animals will be decided to become extinct.  Unless the nonvoting populace makes themselves known again, the tyranny of Republicans will continue.  Capitalism must be driving this mindless instinct.  Brainwashed to get all you can, can it, and sit on the can zombies inhabit the Senate.  My only logical conclusion is they must be shot.  

Qualifying for Obamacare

There has been way too much going on around here.  Foremost it has been the midterm elections.  Thank God the The Koch brothers accomplished their goal getting North Carolina Speaker of the House into the Senate.  It doesn't mean for a fleeting moment the Republicans will get anything accomplished.  They have the majority now in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Let's watch them continue with their ridiculous agenda suing the President and trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act instead of governing the country effectively.  I am not happy with the result, but it was surprising.  I learned that without an African-American President rallying the minority vote the democrats don't win.  Evidently the populace supportive of President Obama and his agenda weren't motivated to vote in the mid term elections.  That is disappointing.  Is it any different than the Republicans' take on Obamacare, Welfare, Medicaid, or food stamps?  Perhaps this contingency are the same old deadbeats.  That will remain to be seen.  What I now for certain is that I personally will have my Obamacare relinquished come its end on December 31st, 2014.  Because I have been staying with my mother in her home because she is aging, I will post no discernible income for the year 2014.  I have been a cook and a yard attendant, but that is not easy work.  I feel to abide by the rule and regulations of the Internal Revenue Service, officially she should claim me as a dependent.  I feel sure stogy Republicans surely will not allow a fifty two year old son to be claimed as a dependent by an eighty two years old mother.  Under the Affordable Care Act I will not have to pay the penalty for not having health insurance, because I didn't earn enough income to file a federal income tax return this year.  It is unsettling. I qualified for Obamacare like millions of other moderate income singles and families.  That means you work and make roughly between fourteen thousand and twenty-eight thousand dollars a year.  The kicker is low income Americans who make less than the federal government's poverty level do not qualify for Obamacare.  They are left with Medicaid.  With a cousin who works in the Department of Social Services expressly for this contingency, I have been told unless you are disabled and can't work you will not qualify for Medicaid.  Just today I received a notification from the Health Insurance Marketplace stating what I all ready knew.  While I did qualify for a subsidy originally, because I have been living with my mother and not earning income this past year, I will not qualify again for Obamacare.  I will fall into the category of low income Americans who will not be able to receive either Obamacare or Medicaid.  Interestingly enough President Obama took into account this faction of low earning Americans and offered the states millions of dollars for a Medicaid expansion to help cover these people.  Because Republicans staunchly disagree with the Affordable Care Act and want to dismantle the legislation, many governor's turned down the money.  That includes North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory.  The money that was meant to insure me in the year 2015 was refused by my state.  While my current tax status  is an anomaly because I have been working in the cruise industry for over twelve years, I must understand the nature of my situation regarding eligibility for a health care subsidy.  I did not earn income, because voluntarily I stayed with my mother in her home on her dime.  It feels very uncomfortable to surmise because of this change in income status I may have to re-pay my subsidy on my 2015 tax return.  I must re-apply for Obamacare through the health care marketplace between November 15th and December 15th.  After updating this income information simply I will not again qualify for the subsidy.  I will lose my coverage, because I chose not to work and take care of my aging mother.  After working as a ship's pianist since 2002 traveling the world, it is not as simple as returning to your childhood home and reinventing yourself.  The work in the music field that was available the entirety of my adult life starkly now is absent.  Upon coming back to my childhood home to help a family member and needing plausible employment in my chosen field, I am faced with a dire situation.  It seems while I gainfully have been  employed as musician at sea away from my childhood home, the music industry has collapsed.  While particular cruise companies have reduced the number of musician jobs, my line has maintained them.  Possibly this is why joined the cruise industry to begin with.  In the year 2001 I was working steadily as a pianist in bands.  When my father recuperated from a small stroke he began playing again, and I was free to take the cruise job.  I never have looked back until now.  While taking another ship still is an option, the notion of leaving my mother alone is not appealing.  It is a difficult situation.  For other looking in it seems simple.  "Get a job."  Get a job in a country where the music industry recently has collapsed.  Of all the times in thirty years of musical performance that I need employment, it is now that the American music industry has become extinct.  Intriguingly the notion that music somehow should be free has inundated social consciousness in our country.  On any conceivable level this does not compute in my brain.  As human beings in a Capitalist socioeconomic system we pay for everything.  That is the nature of the system.  I never have agreed with our chosen system, but the choosing of music somehow to be exempt from our system is uncanny.  Perhaps air is the only thing for which we do not mechanically pay.  Now by corporate America's choosing we pay for drinking water.  It used to be available inexpensively through our public works commission.  Someone decided this provided water no longer was fit to drink, and so corporate America began to sell it to us.  I am surprised also they have not bottled our free air.  This too will come when the magnetosphere collapses, and we are forced to dwell in a man mades structure shielded either from nuclear fall out from the sun's harmful solar rays or an exploded reactor or bomb.  Then they will be able to charge us for oxygen.  Until then we continue to pay property taxes for our land.  We buy food.  We buy cable television.  We buy internet services for the World Wide Web.  We buy wireless communication for our smart phones.  We buy Hollywood movies.  Why should we not still buy music?  My answer only can be that the effectiveness of music as a soul moving social conscience has been rendered impotent by the polluting of its medium.  Air.  Since the invention of the internal combustion engine and the burning of fossil fuels for energy our air has become more and more polluted.  Consequently the protective layer of Ozone in our atmosphere is becoming depleted most notably over the South Pole.  While this contamination is alarming and important, it is not of which I speak.  Music has been weakened as an art form simply by the polluting of our air by industry.  Unlike electromagnetic waves, mechanical waves require air to travel.  If there were no air we could not hear music.  Slowly our air in America has been commandeered for other purposes.  It is host to noise pollution.  While noise used to dissipate naturally over distance, the invention of the diesel engine has changed this forever.  Because of its firing rate each and every diesel engine produces a low frequency sound wave.  Unlike the transient nature of sound waves produced by music, infrasonic waves created by diesel engines are continuous.  They act as a both a modulator and carrier wave for all other sound.  Because there are so many diesel engines in existence operating simultaneously, music no longer has its same sonic capabilities.  These severely have been diminished by the commandeering of air by industry.  If music is compared to America's need for the energy created by the diesel engine, it will pale.  Obviously this has what has occurred in America.  Ironically as so many jobs systematically have been outsourced to foreign countries, industry has become important than art in America.  Our country is an unsavory salvage yard for mass transportation.  I cannot make sense of it.  What is it Americans do everyday at their jobs necessitating reliance on a car or SUV?  I only can surmise that the automobile is our new culture acting as host for our smart phones.  I cannot support this newly chosen direction for the American economy.  I cannot support my life long devotion to the field of music, because the decision has been made to annihilate it.  In its place is a tepid, selfish, patronizing entity with none of the ideals of traditional music.  Instead of seeking to engage humanity with ideas and opinions, instead it masturbates.  This is the solution that has arisen from still working musicians in America.  Collectively a decision was made to abandon the traditional intentions of music and replace them with selfish ones.  I cannot do it.  In good conscience I cannot sacrifice something so engrained in my soul for monetary gain.  It never has been about the money.  It is about the human condition.  I would rather martyr my musical inclinations than pollute them with such filth.  The only simile I can deduce is this choice somehow is related to the recent onslaught of homosexuality in America.  While the man woman relationship has been paramount to the human condition since our inception, this has changed.  Music has changed.  I am not interested in the change in either.  I would rather continue my convictions both musically and sexually as I always have known, but I can't.  They playing field has been slanted.  The rules have been changed, and I no longer am interested in playing.