I didn't finish my thread.  I'm not sure if I can remember it now, a few hours later.  I was talking about the necessity of getting to know a thirty year old house, again.  I didn't really get to know it when I lived here in my youth.  What I am beginning to remember are a few things.  One is I was an avid model railroader.  When we moved into this particular home, it had a double garage.  That was to be my mecca.  After dinner each evening I would retreat to this garage and work on one of two model railroads I built over the four years I was in high school.  There was something sanctuary about this space.  (knowing full well that the word sanctuary is a noun, not an adjective)  The house into which we moved the summer before my freshman year in high school was three stories.  The den and double garage were built on a concrete slab.  I didn't understand the relevance of this then.  Today fully I understand the benefit.  Concrete is solid, therefore our den and garage seem solid. There could be no more perfect place for our vintage Hammond A-100 organ and Leslie 145 than in this den.  The pine paneling creates a favorable listening space.  Perhaps in the future the carpeting should come up revealing the hardwood beneath it and offering more treble response to its sound.  Ironically in the last several months I discovered that termites had made a meal of the exterior wall of this garage.  While there is a brick facade on the outside, the three small windows that provided illumination to this space appeared to be eaten by termites.  Their frames were riddled with hollow gouges painted over many times.  We contracted the same builders who replaced our windows and installed vinyl siding on our upstairs.  They did an admirable job replacing these windows and all of the damaged framing underneath the drywall.  What we got was a pristine looking wall with three gorgeous windows.  Definitely it changed the feel of the garage.  Quickly I covered up that newly insulated wall with my junk.  The positive result was the garage is much more quiet and a bit more temperature controlled.  It still gets cold, but I have found it much easier to work out there with an even temperament.  I can see better, and I am not distracted by the aircraft noise.  Fully I hope this cold winter will dispense with soon.  Even an efficient kerosene heater does not make it appealing to venture there in the cold weather.  I cannot remember this issue when I lived here as an adolescent.  Besides building a train layout in our garage, evidently I spent a fair amount of time on our baby grand piano in the living room.  The only thing I can remember about this is my mother having to set the timer on the stove to see that I practiced thirty minutes a day.  It was brutal.  I didn't really like practicing, yet I became an accomplished classical pianist.  I don't know how really.  I was not a good sight-reader, but over a given period of time I could figure out a piece of music.  I could learn it in my own time frame.  This Knabe baby grand still sits in this same living room, yet I have failed to make peace with it.  Possibly it is because I have been spoiled working on ships performing often on Yamaha C7 seven foot grands.  These particular pianos largely were responsible for my composing output while on ships.  The instrument is so effective, and each note is so clear and strong, all one must do is pick out the pretty notes.  My goal one day is to have one of my own, but not necessarily in the space occupied by this Knabe baby grand owned by my father.  Over the years this piano functioned admirably.  I learned to play the piano solely on this instrument.  Today I cannot bear to play it, because it has been neglected.  More truthfully I cannot bear to play it, because it belongs to my father.  It is his war artifact, and it has served its purpose.  I feel no sentimental connection with it whatsoever.  Instead I enjoy playing my own Yamaha P2 piano in our foyer.  I do have a tangible connection with it, because I  purchased it with my own money.  This money came from the sale of my Roland MKS-20 Super Jupiter synthesizer module.  It was a worthy trade, and other than having a burnt out backlight it was a solidly professional instrument.  It  could use some more creative patches, but that is for its new owner to provide.  I have a limited sentimental connection with our Hammond A-100.  It doesn't feel like mine, again because it was  purchased by my father.  Most things in this house were purchased by my father.  The exceptions are the things that mean the most to me.  While eventually I did inherit our Honda Ct-70h minibike, and I take great pleasure in riding it on the street to this day, I value the two motorcycles I bought myself with my own money.  I guess all things are like this.  Living here again makes me a different person.  It makes me considerably different than who I  am.  It is difficult to remember who this is, because this heritage is overwhelming.  It surrounds me each and every day.  Without meaning to it inundates my soul.  I have difficulty finding my soul at all.  Often it is more comforting to try and remember, yet when I do I feel is loss.  I feel the loss of my father's presence.  I feel the loss of my sister's presence. I feel a loss of most of the positive things I experienced here in this house.  Namely this is the conspicuous absence of my one and only true love.  We have been separated for many years, and it was I ultimately who made this decision.  She agreed with it.  It necessarily is not healthy to forage these memories.  The same couch is in our living room where we necked, but making this connection is not healthy, is it?  It necessarily is not healthy to try to make new memories in this same space.  How am I supposed to live here now with these issues?  Systematically I have organized, cleaned, and separated my father's belongings from my own.  It has taken a lengthy two year period to accomplish such a thing.  I think I have been thoughtful, respectful, and kind.  Still the absence of his things and the inclusion of mine has not made the adjustment easier.  Still it is difficult to dwell here, because it really is not my house.  It is my parents.  

Re-Entry

It seems I am an anomaly.  After having girlfriends almost my entire life, I landed at age fifty-two living with my mother.  I have no children.  I have no wife.  It is uncanny.  I do not know how I ended up in such a state.  Certainly such a situation demands acclimation.  I have come to realize that the majority of adjustment are in environment.  The last time I lived in this particular home was when I was in high school.  It is difficult to look back.  Why would one want to look back over thirty years at one's life then?  Surely after one has lived half a century the soul searching should be completed.  That is what is unique about my situation.  As an adult, a mature adult although often I do not feel mature, I am back living in a similar environment to one while I was attended high school.  There are several major differences.  The most conspicuous are the absence of half of my immediate family.  Because I do not have a wife or children I am speaking of my immediate family.  This consists of my mother, my father, and my sister.  I am living with my mother because my father at age eighty-six needs the care of a nursing home.  He is lucid, but living in a two story home was not an option for either my mother or me.  His move also took some acclimation, but it happened on his part.  No longer does he want to come "home."  Well, not that often.  That acclimation on my part is far from complete, and there is a simple reason for it.  The majority of time I lived in this house, the four year period I attended high school, I was a child.  This home was purchased by my parents, furnished by my parents, and run by my parents.  This provided a certain cushion for my existence.  Never did I have to bond with the house.  My life was focused on my education and more importantly for me my personal life with my girlfriend.  While living here now I have neither.  I have a much broader and far reaching education, and I have had many girlfriends.  Trying to rewrite my own history with this house almost is impossible, but I keep trying.  There only is so much you can do to modernize your environment before it instructs you you have gone to far.  Then I retrace my steps, undo changes I have made, and proceed.  I think once again I am teetering on this brink.  It is difficult to live in a foreign environment, so it is normal to try to make friends.  As in my case this not always is possible.  Some things just can't be changed.  One of them is Fayetteville, North Carolina.  While many things drastically are different here such as the level of education and its inhabitants, the core of Fayetteville remains steadfast.  The same populace that has controlled Fayetteville staunchly sits on top of their old money controlling its purse strings.  There is little room for diversity.  Instead their is a glorification of the military.  In reality this glorification really is just brown nosing.  The old money of Fayetteville has come from the military, and to keep it it requires constant tending.  It gets old, this tending of the military.  There are other things in life.  There are things other than learning how to kill.  There are things other than learning how to be a soldier.  There are things other than the 82nd Airborne.  There are things other than air traffic, rapid troop mobilization, and wars.  During the late l970's the war in Viet Nam had come to a close.  Richard M. Nixon after a long ten year war, decided it was time to stop fighting.  American troops exited Viet Nam and returned to the U.S.  After living through the Viet Nam war during my childhood and a violent junior high school, the peaceful years of Ronald Reagan were welcome.  Probably they and my college years may have been the best years of my life.  Certainly they were the most fun.  We now live in a different time.  Generation X has moved aside and we have a new youthful generation.  Only can I think they must be called Generation 9/11.  As I really begin to pay attention to what is happening in America after twelve years abroad, it is startling.  It is crystal clear what this generation has seen and experienced.  They sexually are ambiguous.  It no longer seems to matter which gender they are.  I am not sure this is what God intended.   What is most striking is their deserved mediocrity.  I see reality show after reality show, and I see shows that must be produced by this newer generation.  They seem to demand an adherence to their own mediocrity.  It is a kind of selfishness that only could some from miseducation.  When one is ignorant one only can demand that the rest of the world be like you, ignorant.  There no longer seems to be a model of success and not financial success.  There no longer seems to be a model of "celebrity."  There no longer is a model of "movie star."  The quality that seems to have existed in American Hollywood since its inception has grown extinct.  Maybe it is an anachronism.  Maybe with global terrorism and extreme Islam the glamor of Hollywood no longer is relevant.  Still there was and is something underneath the glamor of Hollywood.  There was an artistry and sophistication.  There was a class and education that existed much as it has throughout the world's history.  Whether it was in courts of Europe, the studios of Hollywood, or the performing stages of universities a better more artistic life existed.  Slowly we are seeing the extinction of such a thing.  Is it fair that the ignorant demand all mankind regress to their mediocre level?  It is happening, and reality television is not helping.  We in America have become a generation of brown nosers.  We canvass the vote, and then we tend it for our own selfish good.  It truly is a shite state of affairs.  

American Sniper

Again I will say that the recent onslaught of film releases is a bit overwhelming.  Again I will ask how films can be nominated for prizes when they have not been released.  While it seems as if there are some quality films in this recent stew, a staggered period of release would be easier for the consumer to absorb.  It's hype.  What difference does it make?  A film is a film.  Rarely do they lose money.  If they do lose revenue at the box office there are a slew of other platforms for their viewing and subsequent earning.  The first and only movie I have seen in over a year was American Sniper.  I wanted to see a film that was nominated for best picture.  I was disappointed.  As a composer it was unnerving that there was no musical score.  Upon reflection I do understand that this movie is not intended to be mainstream entertainment.  I think we can agree on that.  It is not a documentary either.  If it had been it would have been more entertaining.  American Sniper was far from entertaining.  It was down right boring at times.  I looked at my watch and asked myself why I was being asked to watch such mundane activity.  It I believe was intended to be a real life story, a glimpse of a Navy Seals average ordinary life.  While most of us know that is a contradiction, this is how it came off in the movie.  There was little notoriety about the unusual skills of a Navy Seal.  Instead it seemed like an accurate depiction of the life of a G.I.  It was rote, it was jar-headed, and it was lifeless.  It had to be an conscious decision by the films director and producer to eliminate emotion from their characters.  It is understandable that a tactical warrior operating at that level would be encumbered by feelings.  He was a machine, and watching an emotionless machine for over two hours is not entertaining.  At the end of its expose the viewer is entitled to one short sentence written on the screen explaining that this particular Navy Seal was killed by another war veteran he was trying to help.  One sentence.  It didn't make sense at all.  Possibly that is because his murderer is yet to stand trial.  The trial is scheduled for February.  After two solid hours of inane melodrama with no musical underpinning, suddenly we are expected to break down and feel sympathy over the Seal's death.  It didn't make sense.    Understanding that Bradley Cooper produced this movie could explain these points.  Effective actors are no always effective producers.  I'm sure that Clint Eastwood needed a gig.  I just wish he had been hired to write a score.  

League Deinflation

While the American Soccer scandal mildly may be diverting,  the case of under inflated footballs is moot.  Moot.  Cold air brings compression.  Air recedes, compresses, and decreases when cold.  Your tire pressure will diminish when cold.  Only I know of this because my mother's "under inflated" beacon began to illuminate on her Honda when it got cold.  I was an ass.  I did not take the threat too seriously, but I did vow to check the tire pressure on our three motor vehicles.  I did.  With a small air compressor purchased from Harbor Freight I righted the wrong.  I in the darkness of our driveway did the check the air pressure of our three vehicles on a Tuesday in the cold.  It seems the measure was low.  The thirty pounds-per-square-inch measure severely was under.  The pounds were low.  Thirty was twenty.  Twenty.  Dangeroso.  It took me thirty minutes at least to check the tire pressure in twelve tires, and with a little Harbor Freight air compressor re-fill their cavities with the recommend air pressure.  (Namely thirty pounds)  A Honda, a Toyota, and a Nissan all suffered the same fate.  Ten pounds less of air due to the cold weather.  (Let's say I am like a ship floating off some coast never to be found.  Let's say I am a ship never that will reach a port, if I stay alive)  Remedied pound pressure.  Ten pounds down.  Let's let the NFL live in peace.  Their balls were deflated.  Mine have been for two year.  What I know is when my basketball was deflated at OSU, my basketball skills increased exponentially.  Well not may exponentially but they were way better tendering that heavy sack.  I became a class "A" basketball player one summer,after General Exams swimming each day after not completing the D.M.A. degree in music composition.  It was glorious.  A hoop, asphalt, and a metal backboard.  These were my companions for one glorious summer of non-DMA completion.  I long for the same today.  A "swishing" net, a metal pole, and asphalt turf.  "Slowly I turn....."   

The American Dream, No the American Slave

First I must turn on my deterrent.  It's my desperate attempt at thwarting the effect of the "Allergen Pump."  To be able to see the computer screen clearly, I have to place a fan in my window pointed at CSX-T's mainline less then several miles away.  I turn the fan on exhaust and let it blow to its heart's content.  A fan doesn't have a heart, or a mind, or an intent.  Only it serves its industry.  In this rare case that is an individual.  There is no business involved other than my writing this blog entry or article as they may come to be called.  The canvass upon which I would write is not blank.  It is rife with deterrents.  Cleverly and invisibly my mind and my body are at a disadvantage.  I have to struggle to accomplish the same things I accomplish in other places, because of this deterrent.  It could be difficult to realize the deterrent is arbitrary.  It is the roguish by-product of mass transportation, and this mass transportation rarely involves human beings.  This transportation which effects my life each and every day is transportation of products.  Logistics they call it.  Container shipping.  Never would I know that Fayetteville, North Carolina is a mecca for industry.  Industry?  Nestled along the banks of the polluted swamp water of the Cape Fear River are industries that go unnoticed to the day to day population of Fayetteville.  They are operating incognito.  Hidden.  Stealth.  The by products of these industries are strong.  They pollute our drinking water and they pollute our breathable air.  No one seems to notice other than that the people of Fayetteville die of cancer at a rate much higher than other geographic locations.  Ho hum.  Conspiracy.  It is not a conspiracy, it is the American Dream for some.  It has and it always will be.  America has not changed.  I knew the very minute I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I never would make a living in the state of North Carolina.  I never have.  It is not possible, because I failed to learn the political lesson required to become a self-sufficient citizen in our fair state.  It is called brown nosing.  It is called ass kissing.  It is called politics.  Oddly enough all of the wisdom and talent I have accrued during my education is not necessary.  What is necessary is that I fit in with the "In Crowd."  They are in control, because of their old money.  Their money creates the local economy in which I would need to work to make ends meet.  No one is concerned with artistic achievement, excellence, or personal wealth, because that would upset the status quo that has been in existence for centuries.  Truly it is amazing America has not changed since her rocky inception.  While she has fought wars, wars with losses reaching hundreds of thousands of soldiers, still America has not changed.  The Confederacy is alive and well, and they want nothing to do with them Damn Yanks.  I live in this confederacy.  I knew the minute I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, there was no way in hell ever I would make a living in the fair state of North Carolina.  That would mean I would have to give up my scholarly and artistic pursuits and learn to kiss ass for a living.  They do it all around me.  People living in this south, exactly like they did a century ago, meet for lunches.  They have dinner parties.  They drink mint julep.  They sit on their porches with one another revering in the notion that they like one another.  It is the most important thing.  The "In Crowd" only is concerned with their own mock happiness created through the admiration of others.  It is not created by the pursuit of things good.  It is not created by the pursuit of things moral.  It is not created by the pursuit of things ethical.  it is not created by the pursuit of things religious.  These would encroach on their practices of making money.  Next to fitting in making money is the next most important requirement for living in the Olde South.  It is not much of an existence.  Actually it makes my stomach turn to lay down, to play dead, or to sacrifice the hunt.  Without the hunt what challenge is left in life?  The "Lost Colony" were not privy to abandoning the hunt.  Even while they acutely were aware of its necessity for their survival in North Carolina, still they perished.  How is it possible that those who are entrenched in the hunt are not flourishing?  It is because the American Dream is dead.  It has been for quite a while.  It used to be profitable for the common man to excel.  Not anymore.  Now it is profitable for the common man to die.  We will try to treat them with our medical establishment.  We will overlook the causes to their diseases and instead treat them with inflated procedures that keep the "In Crowd" in.  We will deny them education.  We will offer them inferior products.  We will pollute the land upon which they live.  America has not changed a bit.  My fight feels every bit the same as a slaves fight for freedom.  It is psychological.  I never could know this oppression, could I?  Yes I could.  Because the slaves now are free does not mean the same struggle does not exist to make a living.  It is the same.  I turn on my deterrent.  My anti "Allergen Pump" meagerly attempts to blow back their fog easily that can envelop my existence.  It has.  It takes every amount of energy and concentration I have to overcome it, because the Republicans are skilled are changing the rules when we are not looking.  They slant the field a little at a time, before we even realize that the ball rolls downward on its on.  We are Capitalist, and this is what capitalism is.  It is not fair.  It is not just.  It is not moral.  It is not ethical.  It is not religious.  It is ruthlessly selfish in its pursuit of monetary gain.  It is like walking in a "Land of Giants" scuffling around the feet of the gods.  They are recalcitrant.  They are misbehaved.  They are unscrupulous, and they are going nowhere.  It is their old money that is our local economic infrastructure.  The American Dream is a grift.  It is a scam.  It hoax.  Do you really believe the "In Crowd" was going to allow you to make your fortune in their briar patch?  

An Assault of Kinesthesia

What is kinesthesia?  Kinesthesia like infrasound is something in which America no longer is interested.  Unlike the l980's when cocaine and its result, exercise and fitness, were popular America today is apathetic.  We want weed.  Because we cannot control and therefore fix our polluted American environment, we retreat.  I myself have learned how to retreat.  I no longer seem to be able to use my own kinesthesia in my favor.  My "mojo" is dormant.  It is hiding, because it knows it cannot win.  The Republicans once again have changed the rules to favor their own game.  The playing field has been tilted, and we as a populace are losing.  Instead we are retreating, trying to find some respite from the pain and suffering.  Why do we deserve to suffer again?  Possible it could be because recent generations of Americans have been spared the tumult that has occurred in other periods of American history.  We have had no Civil War.  We have not had the fight for suffrage.  Still we are battling civil rights.  It is possible we are seeing things of which we have been immune for several decades.  Somehow we as a country side-stepped strife, the strife of the Great Depression, the strife of world wars, and the strife of injustice.  It is hear again.  Only can I think that human solutions must be created by human ideas.  Human ideas come from humanity.  Humanity comes from humans.  The very process of being human or rather being a human  is key.  Humanity traditionally has allowed us to capitalize on the human body and the human mind.  It is a coexistence of both that transcends the human spirit.  Ideas, thoughts, and feelings combine in creativity.  We are rewarded with our senses, and yet also we use them as an impetus for creation.  Today that physical or rather somatic methodology is moot.  No longer do we tap into and rely upon our sensory perceptions, because they are being mangled.  The once clean canvass of our landscape has become so polluted with electricity, sound, and toxins it is a miracle the human race has survived.  Consequently we have become a race of zombies.  It is fitting seeing as this is mainstream American entertainment.  It we continue to fail to reinforce artistic successes in our country, it will not be long before they are forgotten.  We will be burning books like there is no tomorrow.  

Satan's "Land of the Giants"

My ears are ringing.  Especially my left ear is ringing with tinnitus. In the film Conspiracy Val Kilmer clearly through his character Marine Sergeant MacPherson tells the world what causes his tinnitus.  Tinnitus actually is hearing loss, frequencies of hearing loss that somehow are affected by low frequency sound.  When infrasound is present these frequencies of hearing loss "ring" with tinnitus.  I have known this to be true for two reasons.  One is I have had slight hearing loss in my left ear for a while.  Second is because I am sensitive to infrasound.  As a musician it is common knowledge that often we rely upon otoacoustic hearing, hearing that occurs from mechanisms other than our ears.  Most often it is from the skin.  Just as an unborn baby can "hear" music in the womb, we also can translate musical tones into our minds in other ways than actual hearing with the ears.  It is helpful.  When a musician performs most successfully it is likely because they are "playing to the sound."  Playing to the sound is something that was reiterated in the Miles Davis band.  You actually play to the sound you are hearing.  You hear it, and then you manipulate it to create music.  Some way you "get inside the sound."  When I compose at the piano, most successfully at a Yamana C7 grand piano, I am composing to the sound that is coming off the harp.  I am listening and feeling the sound that is created and mixes in the chamber of the grand piano.  I hear it, but also I feel it on my skin.  The combination of these two thing being driven my my musical mind is what allows me successfully to compose.  Many do not know or understand this, and many do not care.  It only is the handful of us that are blessed with this gift also that suffer its curses.  My ears are ringing.  My ears are ringing because there is an intense infrasonic wave bombarding my dwelling.  As I sit perched in a second story corner room protected by new vinyl siding and double-paned windows, the sound wave is so strong it is capable of moving objects.  This phenomenon has been studied and is widely documented.  The effects of infrasound are disturbing at most levels, and I won't reiterate them.  What I will way it this particular infrasound wave is violating my civil rights.  Invisibly it is blurring my vision, causing my joints to ache, and inhibiting my thought process.  In addition to these disconcerting symptoms, it causes my ears to ring.  The ring has gotten louder.  There are a finite group of man made object that create infrasound.  Again no one cares, yet it  is disrupting our society at a level greater than anyone could imagine.  The irony of the situation is because infrasound tangibly can be "felt" in the air by sensitive persons, there are times when I am at war with it.  It is like a selfish, antagonistic, bully that carries on in most cases no matter what I do.  Especially on the weekends it sits in my home controlled by no human.  Endlessly it vomits is mindless soulless message.  It means nothing.  Its only purpose it to support its own industry.  It is a pollutant by product that is unmonitored and unregulated.  Consequently like global warming which finally has been confirmed, we suffer.  The two percent of the time it disappears from my consciousness and my ears, I feel normal.  I feel good.  I feel like I used to feel back in the l980's.  When it is active the other ninety-eight percent of the time, my entire life is disrupted.  Recently the most menacing effect of this rogue sound wave is of an allergen pump.  The south it seems is rife with allergens.  Never before have I been aware of these irritants until I moved back.  What nemesis.  Allergies.  A running nose, watery itchy eyes, and sneezing all are the by products of allergens.  The kicker is an infrasound wave by nature tends to be continuous.  It is created by a machine that is used by man.  The men that use these machines seem to have no respect for their fellow men judging from the infrasound they create.  Unlike air traffic it proliferates twenty-four hours a day.  It is happiest in the late afternoon to the wee hours of the morning.  On the weekends it is continuous.  Often it is not even controlled by a human being.  It is an autopilot.  It just blows and blows and blows.  My eyes burn from the allergens that are being pumped through the air.  My ears ring, and I suffer.  The Allergen Pump.  If media is trying to paint a portrait of extremism in America, there is no need to look past our own economical infrastructure.  Extremism in America infiltrated our economic infrastructure years ago.  Extremism is in the products we are being offered.  It is in our system of health care.  It is in our government.  Rogue violent attacks on our populaces are a mere tip of the iceberg to the extremism that exists today.  The extremism that exists today is the same as it always has been.  It can masquerade as muslim, but it is American.  It is the same wealthy elite that always have ruled America.  By nature they also are invisible, but like infrasound they are potent.  I deal with each on a day to day basis.  The majority of my time is spent "dealing" with these antagonists.  There is the physical antagonist which actually kills our population.  Then there is the psychological antagonist which kills our spirit.  It is both, and their ethnic cleansing seems to be more keen than other countries.  It has been happening for quite some time.  Cancer spreads.  It has prospered.  It is lucrative.  Death is more lucrative than life so it would seem in America.  The Land of the Giants, giants that have been with us since human inception.  They control and they will continue to control by death.  The allergen pump should be turned off.  The results will be surprising, possibly not to the economic structure it supports, but to the rest of American civilization.  

The Analogue Landscape

My eyes are tired of looking at this glaring computer screen.  On the other hand I am so pissed off, that I must vent somehow.  After watching a few movies on the AMC network, I both am happy and sad.  I am happy because I feel some things that are familiar to me. That feeling comes from a variety of stimuli.  Beautiful cinematic images on the screen, effective musical underscoring, creative writing, and craftsman acting all move my emotions, especially when they occur simultaneously.  It is this magical combination that makes a successful film.  As I watched these classic movies from decades gone by, the overt reaction I had was sorrow.  How was I feeling sorrow at the experiencing of those artistic things I just mentioned?  It is because mostly they are extinct.  It seems I have lived long enough, a half a century, to be able to witness a true progression of history and art.  This progression, both a progression and extinction, has happened before.  Most notably the stylistic periods in European music represent a similar progression.  While I did not live in those times, broadly I do understand the changes.  Without living during those changes one never really will never know why and how music expired and excelled.  Certainly they were a direct correlation of the politics of the time.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to travel back in time and understand how the Renaissance morphed into the Baroque or Rococo?  Still there is much to be understood in music history.  What I do know today is we are at a similar crossroads.  A specific period of American music history is over.  After watching these classic films on AMC blatantly it is obvious.  American music is and never will be the same.  We are on a downward spiral.  It both is disconcerting and completely disappointing to live in such a time.  I have devoted my life to the art of music, and to be stuck in the year 2014 is a nightmare.  At the age of fifty-two now I am able to look back at over half a century of life and observe.  My mojo no longer is active.  Fully I believe it still is potent, but with utterly and absolutely no impetus whatsoever to pursue music it is in seclusion.  It is in seclusion because no longer do I feel joy in the pursuit of music.  I feel loss.  I feel loss as I undoubtedly observe that American music irrefutably is on a downward spiral.  What has caused this decline?  After viewing several of these AMC classic films, it became glaringly obvious.  The marriage of music to drama or rather music to the human condition is over.  No longer it seems does the entertainment industry feel it is profitable to exploit this strong and magical union.  Everything falters with this decision.  Depth of character, interaction, drama, and catharsis all are are stranded on a digital blue screen of stasis.  Without a search and understanding of the human condition represented metaphorically through music, we are a much weaker race.  We are insensitive, selfish, and violent.  We are being deprived of our core human components without even knowing it.  The duality that served this exploration seems no longer to exist.  In musical terms the absence of the leitmotif leaves actors naked on their deserted islands.  Once a knowledgeable and skilled composer would aid the development of a plot and characters at an intimate level.  This intimacy was achieved because analog sound was analogous to analog film and analog emotion.  It was continuous.  It was not separated into manmade samples.  Analog energy is the epitome of God's energy.  It is powerful, continuous, broad, and expressive.  It has not been compressed into a rich man's capsule.  It is vibrant, alive, and free.  The frequencies of sound, visible light, and emotion are uninhibited.  Today that is not the case.  Today this humanity has been sacrificed for an artificial cyber existence.  It has failed.  All of the computer programming in the world cannot represent the beauty of nature.  Natural sound, natural light, and natural feeling can not be represented by digits, pixels, and decimals.  Compression is no the answer to the human condition, and it never has been.  Always it has been expansion.  Expansion of consciousness, expansion of awareness, and expansion of potential.  The twenty-first century only has brought stagnation in art.  The digital realm entered, existed, and failed.  No application, computer program, or operating system can simulate real life, yet as a populace it has been chosen.  It is cheaper.  It is easier.  The human condition is a remnant of its former self.  It is because our land is polluted.  The pristine canvas upon which analog beauty was created now is a poisonous, volatile, and almost fatal landscape.  The rich and powerful are content with social chaos as it only cements their hold on wealth and power.  They sit back and laugh as humans die.  We are in a new Dark Ages, and who knew?  

Hitting the Ground Running Each Morning

I barely can believe my ears.  What?  I said barely could I believe my ears.  What?  My ears.  Are they yelling?  No  Are they burning?  No.  I don't think anyone is talking about me.  My ears.  They are at rest for a change.  I mean a HUGE change.  Where I live each day when I am vaulted awake either it is a humming diesel-electric locomotive sitting on the tracks at 5:30 a.m., a strafing aircraft from a variety of sources, yard maintenance noise, garbage trucks, or barking dogs.  Clearly I have been able to hear them despite having had completely new vinyl windows and siding affixed to our sixty year old house.  What was the culprit?  The culprit was a little window-mounted air conditioner that sat in a window facing downtown Fayetteville.  Through its crevice came these annoying sounds.  It was multifold.  Not only did sound seem to penetrate through the very bowels of the machine itself, also it permeated the thin wood borders fashioned to seal the window shut.  Wood has a R insulation value of 1.  One.  Let me say it again.  One.  To aid the problem I had made styrofoam panels covered with plastic  that were the same size as the wood panels.  They did little good.  Today was the day I chose to remove this pesky noise conduit because the chilling temperatures of winter are upon us.  No longer did I need its back up temperature moderator.  I can open the other window and with a rather efficient hand-mounted dual propeller fan cool the room in a matter of minutes.  The air conditioner had to go.  Who knew the surprising result it would yield.  Today is the first day in many weeks I can look at the computer monitor and see the type clearly.  My all ready hindered eyesight is not being effected more by the waves of low frequency sound coming from CSX-T, the Norfolk and Southern, and the Abereen and Rockfish.  Secondly today is the first day I can hear the classical sounds coming from WCPE radio clearly and uninhibited.  I have been tweaking my antiquated stereo system for months, but until you limit that unwanted interfering infrasound the music will not be clear.  A better term is "unmodulated."  It is a joy, and only can I laugh at the rude dog across the street that barks at me in my closed garage.  I can laugh at the sounds of all those parking automobiles.  I can laugh at those antagonizing helicopters who seem to care little about who they disturb in the course of their work.  I have found from experience that all good things come to and end.  If you celebrate to pompously surely your neighbors will find some way to eliminate your newly found serenity.  I will not hold my breath, but I can say emphatically for two years my personal solace has been breached like a sleeping seven-year-old's buttocks.  Is life supposed to be this difficult?  

Land of the Giants

I'm not sure today what the sentiment is supposed to be like to return to your childhood home.  Recently one of my childhood homes became vacant for the first time since my parents sold it in l978.  It was liberating for me.  It was the first time I could drive up in our old driveway and see for myself how much the same or different my childhood home was.  Overall it was okay.  The seminal markers in the backyard were gone reminding me of a time when my father was in his heyday.  He had built a small log cabin in our other childhood home in Mocksville, North Carolina.  Our backyard was bordered by a small creek that flooded when it rained and then woods.  He felled trees from those woods, debarked them, and proceeded to build me sister and me a playhouse we would enjoy for years to come.  When he found a better job as the band director for Terry Sanford High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina the cabin moved with us.  (?)  How that happened I am not sure.  What I am sure of is how many extraordinary things my father did for me when we were young.  The second was the creation of a Lionel .027 gauge layout in his band room at that very school.  This was my Christmas present, which he built in its entirety before loading it in a rented U Haul trailer and hauling it to this very childhood home.  In the wee hours of the night it made its way out of that trailer and into the screened in porch that still is on the back of that very house.  It was an amazing feat.  Extraordinary.  Reflecting back upon these things it is a little easier to discover whence my talent came.  I can't remember it today.  I have lost whatever "mojo" I once had.  I don't think that entirely is true, but whatever it was it no longer is relevant to America in the year 2014.  For some reason I have arrived at a time in my life where I no longer seem to want the extraordinary.  Instead I want ordinary.  I want down to earth, mundane, almost boring roots in human reality.  I don't want what the current media is pitching.  I don't want want "Fear and Intimidation."  I don't want the "newest thing."  I don't want cutting edge technology.  I don't want new software.  I don't want a new phone.  I don't want a computer in a watch.  All of these things are useless and in due time will become extinct in proportion to their worth.  It is time America moved on from her smoke and mirrors campaign of trying to make money.  Moving money around for a living no longer is a viable option.  Wall Street sealed their own fate with that one.  I harp quite a bit about modern television, because when I grew up American television was a core component of American life.  The weekly television schedule provided a much needed structure in your entertainment life.  Not only did it entertain, it guided our culture.  The things we did, the way we dressed, and what we talked about highly were influenced by television.  Television was different then.  It was good and honest.  It was a reflection of our real lives that amazingly then were real.  We were living life.  We are not living life today.  We are existing.  The whole substructure of American life has been rendered moot.  Why?  The answer is public education.  Once America cared about her youth.  Fully we understood our youth would be the next generation that would lead America.  We educated and began to empower them.  We openly and willingly passed the reigns on to our next generation.  America today, like a ravenous, narcissistic, and immoral animal began feeding on her youth when the economy collapsed.  When the economy moved from family values to accumulated wealth for the rich, then America faltered.  A heel was kicked out one foot of America, and she has not stopped stumbling since.  Until the middle class and their education again becomes important to America, we will not change.  Making America's middle class a focus of attention will be difficult.  It will mean that the rich who are running the country now will have to take a back seat to the common American.  By taking that back seat fully they will understand that an investment is being made in the future of America's economy.  The needs and wants of Americans once again will become the infrastructure of America.  It will not focus on the slave owners.  It will not focus on the Communist leaders.  It will focus on America and her people.  What will need to happen for this to take place?  It is clear our current system of government is failing.  When Congress becomes so constipated that the President needs to evoke executive order to make progress, it is clear that this body of self serving hypocrites needs to be eradicated.  It is interesting that for the first time in my life, America has returned to a previous point in history.  There was a time when these wealthy lawmakers ruled America.  Trusts they were called.  They ruled with an iron hand.  Several extraordinary presidents changed this over the course of time.  Whether anyone knows it or not President Barak Obama with his Attorney General Eric Holder have made more strides against this great machine than any president in recent memory.  The culmination of this judicial juggernaut must be Bank of America's 16.65 billion dollar penalty for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities and other financial instruments leading up to the economic crisis.  The change in philosophy will not come from our federal government.  While Obama and his team are pioneering that fight, the reestablishment of our economy will have to come from those that are holding America's money.  Simply it has to move from dying hands into hands of honest people who once again are willing to invest in the future of America.  The recent generation of the wealthy who began feeding off of her children only can be represented by one image in my mind.  They are like hermaphrodites they posses the sexual organs of both male and female genders.  They and only they can satisfy themselves with no need of others.  This small contingency of rogue bacteria are extinct.  They have eaten all they can eaten with little to no regard for the rest of America.  They have not fertilized.  They have not rotated their crops.  They have not conserved.  Instead of sewing to reap their crops, only have they eaten of the fruit.  It is enlightening in my life to witness such a historical precedent.  While Viet Nam, Korea, the Dessert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom are notable conflicts, while America's attention was focused in the Middle East, extremists infiltrated our political, governmental, and financial systems covertly.  This is where the damage has taken place, and still is.  What will cause this shift in ideology?  The only plausible solution can be a coup.