Too Many "Bad Vibrations."

The film "Memento" starring Guy Pierce is a stone's throw from how I feel.  Everything once that was familiar to me now is lost.  For a time I groveled in familiarity selfishly indulging in small sentiments that came and went.  Then I realized there was no point. I have absolutely no one with which to share any of them.  Almost each and every sentiment which moves my emotions is vacuous. Absolutely I have no one around me that seems to even acknowledge there could be a small thread of connectivity between them and me.  I have rationalized that this is what America has become, or rather this is what America always has been.  We are capitalist.  Capitalism is a socioeconomic system, but once in American history it coexisted with morality.  Capitalism could not possibly teach morality, so our morality in America comes from another place.  Once it came from church and family.  Organized religion like other American ideals has faltered.  At the hands of immoral people, the constructs that created our American morality became themselves examples of immorality.  We have spiraled downward into evil, and the one Thing that offers us salvation also has become an example of contempt and hypocrisy.  Who could believe in God?  What Being possibly could do what the Bible says God does?  Is not man the omnipotent with our money and technology?  It is a shite state of affairs, and I have found myself surrounded by absolute and complete anarchy.  The philosophies I have learned that have kept me honest and pure are no longer.  Truly it is like being Leonard Shelby each day when I wake.  The comfort of multiple college degrees and study no longer are relevant.  I have grown too old to remember how I once perceived my own vocation.  I could not care less about music.  We went to see "Ain't Misbehavin," the Fats Waller musical on Thursday evening.  While I had seen it before in downtown Charleston at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, seeing this again in my current environment only increased the anxiety I feel from my unfamiliar surroundings.  I enjoyed the show, but I only could ask myself how anyone today could relate to such a story.  A musical Renaissance in Harlem in the l920's?  Let me assure you I have studied the recorded lineage of jazz music.  I am quite familiar with most of the jazz styles, and ironically the pianist and entertainer Fats Waller is once of my favorite so-called jazz artists.  I am learning new things.  I have learned to things in the last week from seeing theatre offerings locally.  I learned that "jazz" or black music really was African-Americans trying their best at living in America.  I also learned that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was living in the wrong city for his own prosperity.  Watching actors Jitterbug and Lindy Hop across the stage while singing jazz music was startling to me, because rarely would we ever see such an image in modern day America.  While I personally have researched some of the short films of the jazz age and enjoy them immensely because of their dance education, I cannot fathom how Americans today would react to seeing such a thing.  Slowly the distance I have grown from the jazz age is becoming synonymous with the distance I have lived from the Classical Era.  It does not connect, because our socioeconomic system does not recognize it.  America does not recognize or support her own cultural heritage.  I feel much more comfortable listening to Bluegrass music.  With fifty percent Scotch-Irish blood in my veins, the sentiment in Bluegrass is familiar.  Oh my God.  I have discovered something.  Bluegrass is familiar to me, although I never have studied or performed it.  I understand its social message and it still is relevant in America today.  Is the message of jazz still relevant?  What was unfamiliar to me in "Ain't Misbehavin" was the concept of heterosexual romance.  For some reason in my years of study of American jazz music, never have I felt a connection of it to romance.  Wynton Marsalis has said that if you are not dealing with the love of a woman or God in your music, then it won't mean much.  Is this true?  Certainly the Great America Songbook is an example of this. I have come to love the biographical film "It's Delovely" depicting the life and musical career of Cole Porter and his wife.  Truly I feel whether true or not that through his eyes alone is how you come to understand his music.  I like many other college students have played jazz tunes from chord changes written in the "Real Book," the most common and readily available fake book for jazz music.  Starkly thirty years later I have learned that I have been shit off the mark.  I have been miseducated.  All of the courses and ensemble in which I have played jazz music do not scratch the surface of the real meaning of America's jazz.  "It's DeLovely" does.  It is a monument to American music, and each and every music student in the world today should be required to watch this film.  What is so telling about it?  It is telling, because it is one of the few treatises the world has today exemplifying the art of song composition.  Song writing is a natural organic process that accomplishes many  goals.  It should be said to all of the anti-God naysayers that song writing is the attempt of the human being to express themselves through music.  A person must have "something to say" in order to write a song.  Why is it that personal expression has become taboo in America today?  In fact most of the tried and true cultural constructs by which we have lived and thrived now are defunct.  We are a shell of a nation.  Only it can be at the evil hand of right wing extremists.  Extreme Muslims ranting at America's former privilege and artisty must be responsible for the quelling of our once creative voice.  I know that I do not feel comfortable playing jazz music anymore, because the sole purpose of it was personal expression of a positive nature.  I as the soloist I possessed the  right and privilege to speak my mind, voice my thoughts, and bare my emotional soul in music.  I do not feel comfortable doing this today, because this faction of the world has made art the enemy.  The things once that provided enlightenment and evolution to the human race now are evil.  It has happened before.  Ray Bradbury, in his film Fahrenheit 451, predicted a dystopian society of the future who saw books as a threat to the well being of human beings.  Dystopian is the perfect world, because dystopian is how I see America today.  There is little good.  Conversely when I was working on cruise ships, I saw little of this in any of the places we visited.  All of the destinations were positive artistic populaces of progressive people.  What has happened to America?  I always have lived in such a way as to embrace reality.  One must live currently, because how else can we survive?  One cannot live in a dream.  One cannot live in a storybook, and yet that that is the dilemma with which I am faced each day when I wake.  I know there is is absolutely no way any adolescent of today would understand the music of Fats Waller.  I know even further that the majority of Americans today as adults cannot understand or appreciate jazz music.  Often it has been said that intellect is not necessary when enjoying jazz music. There is a simple reason for that, but one that has become disguised also with the right wing assault on America's cultural heritage.  It best can be conveyed also with a film.  Recently I had the pleasure of watching Jamie Foxx's performance as Ray Charles in the movie "Ray."  While I have respected this legend with my knowledge of jazz music, it was not until seeing this film that it made sense.  Ray Charles's major offering to American music was with feeling.  His brand of Rhythm and Blues literally made you feel good.  Not only were you hearing polished expressive songs, they possessed an emotional feeling which overtly was pleasurable.  Is this possible today?  Do we in modern American even realize or recognize what a "good vibe" is?  It used to be the sole determinent of success in the entertainment industry.  Today it is lost.  Americans scurry to smoke marijuana to create this once readily available anodyne.  What happened?  It is simple.  Vibration whether electrical or emotional comes in waves of varying frequencies.  They can travel through the air passing between physical bodies and infecting others.  These waves often can be considered instincts, because they often are triggered subconsciously.  This "mojo" has been the secret of human pleasure since the beginning of time, and it is gone.  Modern industry has shit a major dump on the pristine canvas of American life, and they never looked back.  Whether it is coal ash, infrasound, or microwave radiation believe me that those running the world have not one ounce of sympathy or help for our flailing existence.  Effectively they have eradicated God from our consciousness and they have let evil proliferate beyond measure.  It is in this construct we are doomed to live the rest of our lives.  

Male Strippers

Recently a friend of mine posted to Facebook a video showing stationary exercise bicycles specifically placed in a public square.  Upon pedaling the machines a neon-like video show ensued creating a male stripper gyrating sexually in front of the machines.  The women seemed to go bizerk.  Without reservation they crawl aboard the machines and begin pedaling feverishly fueling the male burlesque image.  While the flash mob building projection may have been effective selling French mineral water, I question the women's response.  How can such a private sexual response be triggered so quickly and effectively in public?  Why and how would pedestrians bite so easily on a wormed hook?  Even if the sheer novelty, entertainment, and surprise lured the onlookers in, why would women so effortlessly abandon their manners and succumb to such a low brow enticement?  Is this representative of all women?  Do all women in the dark corners of Chippendale clubs suddenly lose all composure and offer their bodies to hunky gigilos?  It is uncanny to me.  I don't believe men would react like this.  We have been so brainwashed that heterosexuality today is bad, no one would dare acknowledge that somehow their bodily chemistry is wired for such a thing.  That's the way I feel.  American society truly has changed, and homosexuality is a part of it.  Because heterosexual have failed to such great lengths does not mean that suddenly the human race has mutated.  Then again as I look at images of my favorite movies stars, I see remarkable transformations to their physical appearances.  I believe we are in an age where electromagnetic energy is so strong in our environment it is impossible to discern the difference between normal biological evolution and cancers.  Too many things are awry.  The heating of the planet, which is easy, is one.  A letter to the Iranian government from Republican legislators is another one. What is happening?  My question is how men would be accountable for such a reaction in public.  Would the viewing public find it so entertaining to see men honestly responding to a female burlesque performer in public?  Of course not.  It would be scorned, and men would be accused of being sexist.  This fight of so called equality has been going on for decades, and it is hypocritical.  I resent it that I am not allowed to show my interest and appreciation for women and the female anatomy lest being deemed sexist.  I must do it privately.  This is not how America once was.  Once the heterosexual bond between a man and a woman was the sole foundation of society.  Could it be our devolution of conscious and sensibility is somehow linked to this newly discovered movement of homosexuality?  Rather have traditional homosexuals hidden all of these years only to attempt to emerge now for some reason?  I don't understand all of it.  I respect our president's agenda for peace with Cuba, nuclear agreement with Iran, and penalizing American businesses for fraud.  It is unprecedented what Attorney General Eric Holder has achieved.  With the vengeance and savvy of a founder of this nation, he has used America's legal system for what it was intended, justice.  Effectively through prudent litigation he has punished unethical practices in our private sector.  Never before have we seen such penalties.  I was wondering why BankofAmerica suddenly closed many of their drive up windows and reduced their tellers.  It is because they are attempting to mitigate a 16.65 billion dollar penalty for their involvement in hedge funds.  Similarly the state of North Carolina has levied a 25 million dollar fine on Duke Power for their irresponsibility concerning their coal ash pond leakages.  It seems to me that America has lost all her sensibility.  The right wing Republicans almost have succeeded attempting to hide our true history, the events that have molded our national philosophy.  

A Torment of Thoughts

Many thoughts are swirling around in my head at the moment.  They are disparate relating to the barrage of news stories we receive each day from our amateurish television networks.  News reporting is an egotistical recalcitrant child of the industry once she was.  It is not worth watching anymore, but we do it out of sheer boredom.  I do not watch current news because I want to be intelligently informed of the days activity.  I watch current news because it is a habit.  Watching the news once was a national habit. It bonded the nation together with honesty and integrity, when once we were able to be bonded.  Today we are disparate.  One only has to turn on the tube to see a smattering of hope from minorities.  Whether it be little people, African-Americans, trailer trash, or the like television desperately is trying to cater to some demographic.  Television has lost touch with America's mainstream, which is understandable.  Do we even have a mainstream anymore?  I think not.  Judging from what we see on television, every conceivable minority is seeking recognition.  What is television, and I don't mean the actual mechanical device?  It is changing from a clunky, RGB tube-oriented, analog communications device to a sleek tablet computer.  Is it prudent that television networks are seeking to reinvent their product on this new medium?  Does it matter?  Does it matter which wireless protocol television uses to broadcast it mediocre product?  Think about it.  Radio waves are radio waves, whether they are G4, WiFi, or normal television.  What do I mean by "normal television?"  Normal television was an analog signal broadcast over what we call radio waves.  Radio waves are a portion of the electro-magnetic spectrum the FCC considers safe for consumer use.  It was not long ago before past president Bill Clinton opted to auction off newer microwave frequencies, that television was a harmless wireless radio signal.  You bought a box from the store and an antenna from Radio Shack, and you were in business.  With a little tin foil and tweaking of your antenna you could receive four to five local television stations, enough to keep you relatively well informed about local and national events.  Today all of that has changed.  Providers instead are chasing the holy grail of the internet trying to eliminate "Mr. In Between."  I didn't get it until how.  The iPad must have a modem with great bandwidth thus requiring increased bandwidth from internet providers.  I remember when the new devices were being marketed.  A representative said they would gobble bandwidth happily supplying new content more akin to cable programming.  Netflicks and other streaming movie sites must be a part of this.  I never have watched television on my computer.  I do watch YouTube, and mostly I do not enjoy it.  I do not enjoy sitting at my computer desk staring at a screen several feet away listening to sound through tiny speakers.  It is not relaxing or entertaining.  It is informative the way I have come to recognize the function of a personal computer.  While I have opted to use iTunes to catalog my original music, I do not find it entertaining.  I find it informative.  The computer to me is informative.  It aids the pursuit of knowledge.  I am not sure America is ready for this change.  It would be interesting to hear if polls were taken what are the viewing habits of modern America.  Who watches what?  How do they watch?  I watch TV.  I sit down at night and channel surf with my antiquated analog remote control.  I have no cable box.  It is too complicated.  There are too many buttons and options.  It takes too long for the channels to change.  Often I flip through my entire selection of 60+ odd channels and find nothing but commercials, commercials all playing at the same time with little or no programming.  It is infuriating.  Then I remember that others must be streaming their own choices through the internet.  That is way too much trouble.  Isn't that why we pay network executives?  Isn't it their job to develop the weekly prime time schedule?  That is defunct.  I have realized that, as I watch advertisements for new shows.  They are desperate attempts at trying to represent and reach a contingency.  It seems to me the main contingency I recognize in America today is homosexual.  Rarely do I see anyone that bares a resemblance to characters in television shows I watched as a kid.  Truly we have changed as a country, and I do not relate.  I see confusion, weakness, and childishness.  Rarely do I see talent, vision, or artistry.  I have been spoiled, and I am getting old.