Wealth and Mediocrity

Maybe my timing was off.  Maybe Ft. Bragg currently isn't putting together a two mile long war train underneath the ground at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.  Supposedly the Marines have blown that particular pop stand and returned to their coastal Atlantic stronghold of Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville.  I am not sure how they travel to Bragg.  The aerial vehicle of choice for the Marines is the VTOL Osprey.  They train on the army's artillery twice a year, so I assume they fly.  All of that aside my point is that with three operating railroads located in Fayettenam, even if they aren't putting together one of those massive munitions trains, it can seem like it.  This time it was Norfolk Southern.  For some reason their prime movers have been sitting at CSX-T's Milan yard the last week.  Fayetteville's three railroads share trackage that all uses the small switching yard crossing Blount Street parallel to Robeson Street.  It is the luck of the draw which paint scheme you will see on any given day.  On bad days you will see all three.  The Aberdeen and Rockfish, credited as one of the most successful shortline railroads in the United States, uses vintage motive power that is over sixty years old.  That boils down to EMD's GP-7, GP-18, and GP-38.  The GP-7 is the most offensive, and also it is credited as being the only non-rebuilt "Geep" still in service today by its original owner.  Talk about dutiful.  It is obvious that the maintaining of these original locomotives has allowed the A&R to remain financially viable.  Today in America, unlike in our history, we have become an expendable society.  We sell products which are expendable and thus not meant to stand the test of time.  This includes computer hardware and software which are designed to fail or become extinct on purpose, so that we will to upgrade.  To anyone who has studied computer science before the year 2000, this is not a prudent philosophy.  You stick with what works, chewing gum, paper clips, and all.  When you achieve an operating system which happily runs your programs with few system crashes, you keep it!  This is not our newest business philosophy in America.  Slowly over the last decade our markets have become saturated with inferior products prompting a slow down in American spending.  Americans do not look forward to spending money, when it is not both fun and rewarding.  Spending, like most things in America, has become a chore.  Buying a car is a chore.  Buying a garden sprinkler on eBay is a chore.  Buying groceries is a chore, because there are so many inferior products being marketed to us.  It takes diligence to sift through this muck and make an educated buying decision.  Recently I became a second generation home owner.  More accurately my sister and I will inherit my parents home when they die.  That will not occur for some time, and my sister and her husband all ready have their own home.  A predicament this presents to me.  Do I give up my plans of being a viable professional musician and living in a large city, or do I accept this token of inherited wealth and plan to live in it?  To live in this house is a challenge.  It not yet is mine, but I live in it.  I have lived in it like a transient for some time.  I have been working on cruise ships, and that job requires that I travel and sometimes live on ships.  It has not been a total stretch to camp out for a while in this house.  As time passes it is becoming more difficult.  I have begun to lose touch with my profession.  To make matters more difficult my mother has begun to plant seeds of doubt whether or not I still can get a gig.  She would rather me stay here, where there are few musical opportunities.  The ones there are are highly prized and guarded.  It is a bit of a conundrum to me to see musicians so tenacious about their own jobs.  To understand this scenario imagine being able to direct the United States Ground Forces Band at Ft. Bragg.  You have notoriety.  You get to play around in music (which if fun), and you get paid.  Now possibly we can understand why musician jobs are coveted as the holy grail.  We have a Fayetteville Symphony, yet possibly only one member lives in Fayetteville.  That is because he has a teaching job here.  The rest of the musicians commute from rather long distances to play in the Fayetteville Symphony.  It really is not the Fayetteville Symphony at all.  It should be called something else, possibly the Fayetteville Regional Symphony.  Still I am not sure if that should qualify an instrumentalist from  Charleston, South Carolina as a real member.  This is the way that it is, and consequently it is a much better orchestra.  I don't really enjoy their concerts, because I do not know the people.  When The Fayetteville Little Theater became the Cape Fear Regional Theater, they began using professional equity actors from all over the country.  The shows for me lost their appeal, because I do not know the people.  I have done my fair share of pit orchestra work at CFRT, but I can't remember it.  Bo Thorp officially has retired as the acting Artistic Director, and I personally do not know its new director, Tom Quaintance.  He is a quality director, but I do not know his people.  It is not the same kind of local theatre experience.  On a different note as I watched Cecily Strong roast the gamut of the world last night at President Obama's press corp dinner, it dawned on me.  The press is mediocre.  With the exception of Rachel Maddow, the rest of the press are lazy overpaid zealots.  Like the rest of American products being offered to us each day, their product also is inferior.  It was blatant.  It brutally was telling to watch the president tell the truth about life in America, in spite of the remarkable spin that has been placed on us by our media.  It singlehandedly gave credence to the profession of comedy, which also tells the truth about life.  Really that is all you have to do to be funny, tell the truth.  Hearing President Obama and Ms. Strong tell the truth was uplifting and inspiring.  Here were two extremely intelligent well-prepared public figures who put the press corp to shame by not spinning the truth.  It pointed out to me why there no longer is talent on the airwaves, because wealthy mediocrity does not want it.  In a few short minutes I was transported back to my high school days, when all I knew was to excel.  You excel to stay away from wealthy mediocrity.  I had a moment of extreme lucidity.  Lately I have realized there are few people around me with whom I would choose to interact.  This includes television.  Not only would I not choose with which to communicate, I would not choose to which to listen.  I flip through the channels late at night, and slowly there has become nothing to which to listen or watch except wealthy mediocrity.  Evidently there are a lot of rich people who own television.  I have become surrounded by the very faction of people I have spent my life trying to avoid.  It is easy for me to remember the real Golden Days of Television.  Ms. Strong suggested we are in such a period now. [sic] Her vehicle of delivery often was an unfinished sentence leaving the audience to contemplate her insinuation.  Ms. Strong suggested we are in a Golden Age of Television, but......   It is not true.  It is far from the truth and for good reason.  There is no talent on television.  There is little talent anywhere in America anymore, because we do not value it.  More precisely wealthy mediocrity does not want it, because it points out how mediocre they are.  (Kardashians, Housewives of Atlanta, etc.)  Upon entering the gardening aisles at WalMart, you are swamped with names of mediocre products like Orbit, Melnor, and Gilmour.  While it is possible these manufacturers are producing some quality products, the majority of what they are offering on television and on the aisles at WalMart are inferior.  I know this from experience.  Most of the water-related products will last one season.  All of the oscillating sprinklers I have purchased have failed in one way or another, and I have put in a fair amount of time searching for them.  They all suffer from the same design flaws.  The jets become clogged with dirt, and more commonly the gearing breaks or they begin to leak.  It hugely has been frustrating.  Often the knob which adjusts the  spray pattern does not have markings forcing you to experiment with a flowing sprinkler.  I have spent fifteen minutes attempting to adjust one of these sprinklers.  I have come to realize  these sprinklers represent much of America's product.  We are inundated with wealthy mediocrity.  The Golden Age of Television  encompassed talent which abundantly is evident throughout the history of American television.  Talent is evident, because it was required to be viewed.  Today we are a much less discerning populace, and talent no where is to be found.  Talent is absent, because wealthy mediocrity does not want it.  What wealthy mediocrity wants wealthy mediocrity gets now in America.  I do not want to see Bruce Jenner try to become a woman on television.  Who gives a shit?  It is pig fodder.  Talent is absent, because talent takes effort.  Talent takes effort, and it takes years of study and discipline to refine it.  Talent is the ability of an artist to contemplate, understand, and then comment upon an issue through a medium.  In real time an artist opens their emotional psyche up to an issue, and allows it to respond guiding the artist in their  commentary.  Wealthy mediocrity does not attempt this.  They are too lazy, like the media.  Artists do this.  Once artists, not wealthy mediocrity, were valued in American media.  Artists can come in many flavors.  They can be news anchors, they can be sound engineers, they can be visual artists, and they can be actors.  Most importantly artists can be musicians, and this leaves the largest void in popular American culture.  We no longer value artistic music.  If we did wealthy mediocrity would be forced to recognize and acknowledge that the arts are produced by valuable, worthy, talented people, not themselves.  Then the balance of power in America would be upset.  This trend recently has promulgated and no better can it be represented than with America's lack of melody.  Once we were a country of tunes.  Tunes or melodies were a core component of our everyday life.  We had patriotic tunes.  We had hymns.  We had spirituals.  We had lullabies.  We had American popular songs.  We had Bluegrass.  We had Country and Western.  We had jazz.  We had Rock.  We had Funk.  We had Soul.  Anywhere in America you would turn a musical underpinning was in place guiding you.  That is over.  We have become a tuneless soulless nation.  Both television and radio are a part of this demise.  It is obvious wealthy mediocrity has acquired these two mediums, and they are not able to stomach a piece of humble pie and recognize and acknowledge that great music is created by great people, people of worth, value, and talent.  How we have become this selfish nation is beyond me.  Being forced back in time by President Obama's press corp dinner gave me a comforting clarity.  Still today I am fighting the exact same contingency which existed in the l980's.  Nothing has changed, except they have won.  We do not hear catchy television themes.  We do not hear clever commercial jingles.  We do not hear effective drama underscoring.  What we will hear is the same innocuous droning jungle drum cue present in almost every movie trailer.  Instead of wit, humor, and intelligence wealthy mediocrity use fear and intimidation.  Infrasound-laced jungle drums have become the new battle cry for wealthy mediocrity.  Like Republicans they dull our minds with sheer will, not talent.