I'm Movin' on Up

Jazz is dead in America.  Thoroughly I enjoyed playing it, when it was alive.  Possibly Wynton Marsalis could disagree with me.  He gets to play.  I don't.  Jazz is dead in America, because we no longer as a nation deserve it.  The ideals in jazz music, the honesty, the love, and the humanity no longer are the prevalent sentiments in America.  If you did assemble all of that jazz and resurrect it for a moment, when you stopped listening and faced reality in America, you would be bludgeoned.  I know this, because it happens to me still, today.  The first time it happened, the reality that jazz was dead, was when I had become abandoned as a jazz educator.  Academia is the only environment that is nurturing enough for certain things to survive.  Jazz is one.  I would guess that if and when I was hired to play a southern wedding, we would play the same beach tunes we did in the 1980's.  This is not progress.  Jazz represented the American Dream, and the American Dream is dead.    It angers me somewhat I bought into this ruse.  I was a a friends home, a bonafide jazz scholar in Columbia, SC, and we had spent the afternoon smoking cannabus, drinking brandy, and enjoy pre-recorded jazz music.  We were listening to "sides."  It is a kind of joy that no longer do I experience.  The feeling that is contained in jazz music is like bliss.  As you can imagine you must be careful with bliss.  Bliss does not do well in America.  We have become a nation of angry, malcontent, psychologically-disturbed serfs.  No one in Washington or corporate America is looking out for us.  Jazz is dated, because it allows the existence of bliss in American society.  We know that this is not possible.  We are a nation of angry, malcontent, psychologically-disturbed serfs.  Serfs don't listen to jazz.  They listen to the Allman Brothers.  I walked out of my friends home happy and content, and was bludgeoned by 102 degree summer heat.  I realized immediately that the only other place I had to go was my own desolate, boring, empty apartment.  It was not a jazz club.  It was not a home with a yard.  It was shit.  Jazz was dead, and it took me quite a few years to realize this.  There were no more concerts.  There was no more studio work.  There was no pay check.  Summer, 102 degree heat, Columbia, South Carolina.  When I moved to Columbus, I tried to take my southern jazz sensibilities with me.  They wholeheartedly were rejected.  The folks in Cowtown were a more die hard group.  There was no riding down the Sunset Strip with the top down and your hand in your girlfriend's crotch.  Instead there was Jimi Hendrix.  Instead of New Orleans jazz, there was Chicago jazz.  I changed.  I changed myself, and it was the best thing I ever did.  I don't play much jazz piano anymore.  I don't play any jazz trumpet, although I am good at both.  Instead I took a job with Carnival Cruise Lines playing in their "orchestras."  When Carnival downsized their music program, I moved to Royal Caribbean.  Never was it as fun as playing in a Carnival band, but the pay was better.  The beauty of a cruise line is they are not the American South.  They don't fancy beach music, plantation homes, and tradition.  They embrace over seventy different nationalities of employees, and they seek to provide mass happiness.  While bliss no longer is possible in America, it is more reasonable on a transient ship floating around in the world's oceans.  I would compose piano music in a music locker below the ship's crew bar.  Off duty crew members would be partying like crazy, and I would be composing meaningful, progressive, expressive music.  The vibe translated.  It was happy.  It was an opportunity.  It was bliss.  

What's Worse, the Confederate Flag or Southern Weddings?

I don't like Charleston very much.  A friend of mine from my Columbia days, a bass player, is playing jazz piano there five nights  a week.  Now is he on the faculty at the College of Charleston teaching jazz.  I guess I should be impressed by that, but contrarily it is surreal.  Pianist John Emche once was the Coordinator of Jazz Studies at USC in Columbia.  I was his Graduate Teaching Associate for two years.  The friend of mine from my Columbia days playing jazz piano five nights a week in Charleston became Dr. Emche's GTA when I graduated.  He is a bass player.  It seems there is more work for pianists.  I am a pianist, but I don't identify with it.  Several jazz pianists have died in recent years.  Mark Flugge, of Columbus, Ohio, took his own life after years of frustration dealing with a cochlear tumor.  A man I did not know, Tommy Gill, was also a jazz pianist in Charleston.  He died last year at the age of 49.  Dr. John Emche died of a brain tumor shortly after I graduated from USC with a Masters degree in jazz and commercial music.  For good reason I have blocked this period of my history from my memory.  I choose not to remember Columbia, because it brings me pain.  There are several reasons why it brings me pain, but I have moved on.  The pain upon acknowledgment still is there, so I must write about it.  It involves  neither the friend of mine playing jazz piano five nights a week in Charleston, nor Dr. Emche.  In a fringe kind of way it does involve Tommy Gill, although I did not know him.  Upon having encountered his untimely death and thus his existence, I was forced to acknowledge my own presence in the Columbia jazz scene in the late l980's.  I choose not to remember it.  I choose not to remember it, because.... Drum roll please!  I choose not to remember it, because ultimately in Columbia I became a failure.  At least that still is how it seems.  It is how I feel, because no one associated with my presence there, except for one extremely good jazz scholar friend, knows me now.  As I peer back in time at my existence then, still it seeks to define me.  That is because those memories still live in someone's mind.  She, like me, chooses not to remember that period of time.  The hazard of neither of us allowing those memories is they stay the same.  I have moved on.  That small window of time no longer defines me in any way.  I have moved on.  I had to move on.  My failure may or may not have been at my behest.  I was disappointed, and as a young, immature, motivated man I took it badly.  The bait was laid, I nibbled on the bait, and then the trap fell shut.  I was on the outside.  The life I had in Columbia for over three years, a privileged life of musical success, was taken from me.  I did not get the college teaching job I had been filling in for as an adjunct faculty member.  Instead it was given to an Eastman graduate with L.A. studio experience.  It was the wrong choice.  It is easy to know you are qualified for a position when you experienced it both as a student and a teacher.  I gave my soul to my academic discipline of teaching jazz and commercial music, and I was an excellent educator.  A Music Education degree from UNC-Chapel Hill assured that.  What I wasn't was a music star.  Never did I want to be such a thing.  I knew it was not realistic.  While jazz musicians then did merit both respect and acclaim, I had no intention of moving to New York to walk the streets in search of playing work.  Instead I recorded some of my original fusion music using the then fifteen-year-old jazz saxophonist Chris Potter.  For him the rest is history.  For me it ruined my life.  Suddenly this small amount of new found fame became my goal, and not by my choice.  Performing at Storyville in New Orleans was an unpleasant trip.  I was a college professor chaperoning a band.  Winning was pleasant as was having my picture taken with Doc Severenson.  That night a nightmare began.  My new role was to be music star, and I didn't want it.  Unknowingly I adopted it in an attempt to win back my relationship, which ended badly.  My clout, my talent, and my intellect all were compromised for a shallow attempt to be a music star.  I failed at this task.  I did not fail being an influential jazz educator.  I did not fail as a jazz instrumentalist.  I failed, because the opportunities that were given to me to allow me to succeed at which I was good were taken away.  One was a job teaching jazz and commercial music at the college level.  The others were opportunities to perform.   Suddenly I was in the same melting pot of wanna be musicians as everyone else.  This humble pie was forced down my throat by a vindictive, angry, and disappointed ex.  It was convenient.  Out I went, and in she came.  The tables turned, the power exchanged, and I fell from grace like a dead horse.  The interesting thing is I do not define myself in any way with this period of time.  For others it remains the same.  Reading Tommy Gill's obituary reminded me that once I held the position of young southern jazz enthusiast.  I was replaced, so I moved on.  When a certain set of circumstances attempt to define you by denying you opportunity, you go elsewhere.  I never wanted to be a music star.  I feigned it, because I was hurt and single.  Mistakenly I thought that by becoming successful in this new arena I would reclaim my glory as a jazz educator.  It was a solecism, and it ruined my life.  Suddenly after six years of collegiate study I began to think my musical value was determined by society.  Society had the right to judge my work.  This society took musical refuge in beach music being played at their wedding receptions.  I moved on.  I went to OSU, and again I studied composition at the doctoral level.  It was the best thing I ever did.  I clung to my old ideals for a while, until I learned to do something more.  I played in a soul/rock band.  I wrote music for the orchestra.  Later I played in a Hip/Hop band, and it was the most enjoyable two years of my life.  With a fair amount of tenacity, I abandoned my jazz teaching ideals and expanded my musical horizon.  I learned to improvise on the trumpet.  I learned to produce music in my home studio.  Eventually I was able to dissect my musical soul from my short-lived jazz fame.  Yes, I produced what probably was Chris Potter's first studio effort, but jazz is dead in America.  It seems jazz abandoned me, so as a musical visionary I moved on.  I circumnavigated the shallow musical sentiments of the South's society, and became enlightened.  No one deserves to suffer forever for being successful.  

Staying Vital, Creating Havoc

I figured out a while back that in most instances we as human beings are not able to actualize our true desires.  Maybe it is these desires that drive us.  Today, almost eight years after George W. Bush was in the Whitehouse, the American Dream is a farce to the mainstream public.  The economic tables have turned, and now new money is in control.  We do not have much say in it.  Billions of dollars are moving around each day, and still our economy is in the ditch.  It is in the ditch, because we have no real goods and services.  When America was great, she was great for a reason.  It took willpower to make that happen.  There was no happenstance.  There was no winning of the lottery.  America became great, because innovators worked hard to become successful.  Today there is little motivation to do such.  We are drugged in our small capsules of life watching Millenials "find themselves."  It is a disturbing vision.  The traditional methodology of success no longer applies, because America has changed.  We are not the same country.  The country we have become also is a disturbing vision.  It is not far from the vision science fiction writers have had over the decades.  Soon firetrucks will be arriving to burn books in our homes.  All ready "the man" has burnt most of the truth in America.  The ashes are on the internet.  Who knew businesses would be the leaders in internet philosophy?  The answer is many knew, and this is what created the internet bubble not that long ago.  America, being a Capitalist country, is not forgiving.  Instead we are ruthless, and we rob our friends for our own sustenance.  A Socialist society seeks to provide equally for all people with a public means of production.  It is history that system, because of human weakness, failed on a massive scale.  Who is to say Socialism can not work?  The recent Uber debacle is the perfect metaphor for today's America.  Businesses practices which have been in place since America's inception are being challenged with new ideas.  It is interesting that Millenial propaganda is strong enough to challenge century old labor practices.  Without history there is no way for anyone to understand their grift.  Why not let people pick people up for little to no money in the name of love?  It is kind of like a self-driving car.  Maybe this is the new Hippie movement.  Today we as Americans have no choice but to live in this closed and immature arena.  The personalities who have shaped America are dying off, and we are left with this.  This is the product of our governments disregard of America's future and her youth.  They know how to write code, but they know nothing of American history.  When cab drivers rage holy war against Uber in the name of their jobs, we should not be surprised.  Also we should not be surprised when youthful American men murder innocent citizens in the name of Osama Bin Laden.  He too was scorned by his chosen people, and he waged revenge.  It is not pleasant being rejected.  As a Christian man fully I understand the concept of abandoning your baggage.  Fully I understand that if you sell your belonging and follow Jesus you could be an influential and important apostle.  Jesus may be on earth, but we don't seem to know it.  His return is prophesied in Bible as is the return of satan.  I don't see Jesus, so I have decided that abandoning my human purpose is not prudent.  In many ways it would make my life easier.  It would make my life easier, because although I am content with my musical accomplishments, I have to continue to live.  If I continue to live it only would make sense if I make use of my Godly directive.  If you know your purpose why not pursue it?  Did Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs achieve their success by selling their belongings and following Jesus?  Would I follow either of these men when our survival is at risk in America? The answer is no.  Computers do not grow food.  Computers do not build shelters.  Computers do not think.  I chose to think, and it makes my life a living hell.  When I think about the things that are important to me and my Godly directive, inevitably my emotional state devolves into a state of depression.  Why is this?  It is because what is interesting to me tangibly is not in my presence.  I can listen to musical pieces, I can watch movies, and I can understand and know how to compose for these idioms, but I am not doing it.  As an academic this is normal.  Academics by nature know many things.  They should be able to teach these things.  I do, but I am not involved with any of them.  I have to read about them.  I have to read about others who have the privilege of doing these things.  This in turn makes me sad.  I miss this process.  The more I think about these things to fine tune my mind in their actualization, the more I am sad because astutely I realize I do not possess them.  It is a quandary.  Must I give up my ideals to be happy?  

The Spaghetti Western

I happened upon Seth Macfarlane's 2014 film "A Million Ways to Die in the West" last night on Direct TV.  I enjoyed the movie, because it was funny and unpredictable.  It is possible it may become a modern cult film like "Rocky Horror."  Mr. MacFarlane is an connoisseur of physical comedy.  The ghosts of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplain, and the Three Stooges are everywhere in the film, and he takes a beating!  The chemistry between him and Charlize Theron was tangible.  He could have done worse for leading ladies.  A few times I saw Mary Ann Lomax.  A few times I saw the "Monster."  For the most part I was surprised that Ms. Theron physically looked the same she did in other movies.  There was no "Amanda Bynes" syndrome happening, and that is surprising in 2015.  She is a formidable actress.  He carried the film well as both a writer and a leading man.  What became interesting to me was how a "Blazing Saddles" sequel-type film utilized such a polished musical score.  As I watched the western hi jinx on the screen, I began to question if Joel Mcneely was writing musical farce.  His score was eloquent, beautifully mixed, and slick.  The sound of the orchestra was more polished than most top shelf Hollywood films to the point of making me question its choice.  Certainly a score of this type adds considerable dimension to what could turn out to be a fringe film.  Then I began to think this beautiful score could be detrimental.  There is a formula to writing westerns, and while Steven Spielberg possibly has dabbled in the genre references to his first blockbuster "Jaws" only can be perceived as satire.  Mr. Mcneely is a formidable composer and jazz instrumentalist as degrees from both the University of Miami and Eastman will provide.  I found the score to "A Million Ways to Die in the West" not a tribute to the late Elmer Bernstein, but a melting pot of Hollywood blockbuster musical cues.  These disparate cues were interspersed in the film possibly with the intent of being musical satire.  Upon having read an interview with Mr. Mcneely, he divulged that was not the case.  Instead his concept was to write serious film music in spite of the lighthearted antics on film.  I am not sure this worked.  It created a watchable film, but in terms of cementing a concrete and cohesive message...  Well you can figure it out.  It was a challenging project.  Mel Brooks set up the Count Basie band in the dessert.  I found myself wanting a more primitive western sound in the vein of Jerry Fielding or Ennio Morricone.  Mr. Morricone was the musical king of the Spaghetti Western, and one viewing of Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, and Nick Nolte acting in "U Turn" will brand the old skool as the best school.  

Film Scoring, Funerals, and the IRS

Sleep is a torment.  It is not supposed to be that way, but our modern American medical establishment is capitalizing on it.  So is The Food and Drug Administration.  I have learned over the years to approach the FDA the same way we approach the IRS.  They are a necessary ill.  Neither is a pillar of virtue, especially when you consider who in America is paying the bulk of taxes to run the country.  The same is true with the medical establishment.  It is not constructed to provide medical care for the common man.  It is constructed to amass money for its purveyors.  Our medical establishment and our FDA are run by pharmaceutical companies.  In essence they are like trusts.  They have chosen the medical profession upon which to base their money-making business practices.  It is of no consequence that this profession philosophically, morally, and ethically exists to aid mankind in ways that are not possibly by non skilled people.  Medicine is a kind of art form, but it has yet to strive to create art for the betterment of mankind the way other arts have.  That is because there is too much money to be made.  When the making of that money is pitted against the humanitarian and altruistic caring for people....  Well you can see the result.  The advancement of medicine now is a political issue.  As a society we make more money treating symptoms, thus advances in medicine are sacrificed.  It is big business, and it is unconscionable.  Stories like that of Michigan doctor Dr. Farid Fata who falsely diagnosed his patients with cancer so he could collect millions of dollars from insurance companies for chemotherapy treatments...   Well you can see the result.  Evil is all around us, and it has encroached at an alarming rate.  It seems every aspect of our lives is assaulted with untruth and deception.  Read the news on the internet.  I once was an avid fan of the World Wide Web.  This was before Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler released a plan that would have allowed companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon to discriminate online and create pay-to-play fast lanes.  Luckily web enthusiasts rallied demanding continued neutrality for free communication on the internet.  Mr. Wheeler changed his position from supporting corporate America to supporting the average American.  While net neutrality temporarily may have been preserved, all ready it has been corrupted on a massive scale.  The selling of advertisement by Google and Facebook to collect revenue has tilted the scales of the internet in the same direction of our medical establishment.  Good cannot prevail in a Capitalist economy.  It can, but not today.  With the disguising of America's history, the undermining of public education, the exploitation of our youth, and the purposeful and manipulative aberration of media America's citizens have become victims.  Once citizens were the centerpiece of American politics.  Citizens were the core of America's existence.  Now we are pawns, and I am getting tired of the fight.  

Full Circle

I had a revelation today, and it was depressing.  You can't live your life as a victim, even if you have been one.  You experience the fall, the pain, and you learn to move on.  While the experience gives you soul, I have found that it is better to move on.  I used my fall as inspiration for a lot of music.  I used those feelings, and then I decided to move on.  Recently I read in a Facebook post that narcissists are victims.  You can't be productive singing the blues for your wounds.  Therefore I teeter back and forth.  When I need emotional resolve and I feel bad, then I remember those experiences.  Then I move on.  When your environment continues to paint you with your falls, it is time to move on.  I am reluctant to write about the South at the moment, because of the controversy with the Confederate flag.  My revelation was that no matter how much I turn a blind eye to my environment and continue to brave a new path of productivity, that environment still is there.  I have ignored it.  I felt twenty-five years is enough time for an environment to change.  I would have hoped that would have meant growth, expansion, and enlightenment.  You hope that things are not the same as they were when you were in high school, but they are.  I was lucky enough to move on from high school.  First it was Chapel Hill, and after four years that was enough.  Then it was Columbia, and after five years it was too much.  I overstayed my visit.  (There is a big story here, but I am bypassing it.)  Then it was Columbus, Ohio.  I was lucky enough to keep challenging myself with new places and experiences, and it paid off.  Never have I been bored or depressed.  Back in high school I would be depressed.  Simply it is because some places will not allow your to grow.  The people that control them will not allow you to be more than they can allow, because they are narrow.  Imagine, a place that can not allow enlightenment.  Instead is fights voraciously for things to remain exactly the same.  That is the American South.  I have experienced bliss in my lifetime, but always it ends.  I can understand trying to make a pleasant situation stay that way, but life on earth evolves.  Also it devolves.  If you are privileged enough to own the rose-colored glasses, maybe this is you.  Maybe if you have fallen, it is the one thing that insists you move on.  You fell for a reason, because there was no place left to go.  I have been told this a few times.  The late Johnny Helms once told me that I did not deserve to find anything better than what they had in Columbia.  He had been to New York, and he had chosen to remain in Columbia so he could eat steak.  It beat starving for a meal in New York searching for jazz fame.  In essence he asked me why I felt I deserved anything more than what I had, and his opinion was I did not.  I should settle for Columbia.  Columbia disintegrated.  The Coordinator of Jazz Studies at USC died of a brain tumor.  I was fortunate because of this to fill in for him for one year as an adjunct faculty member there.  They hired the wrong person, and I told them.  They called it sour grapes, because I wanted the permanent job.  Who wouldn't want a college-level teaching job?  Twenty-five years later in Columbia it has devolved.  It has devolved because the group of professors who created the commercial music program at USC have retired.  Now there is one, and his name is Bert Ligon.  Columbus on the other hand remains steadfast.  Ohio State is a large burgeoning university.  It was when I was there, and it is now.  It has not devolved to my knowledge.  They have made callus and unthoughtful business decisions, but the music remains the same.  It is vital.  I learned more about music in Columbus than anywhere in my whole life.  I didn't learn much in Columbia.  Instead I taught.  With each move I found opportunity and exploited it.  With each move I grasped the opportunities and made them work.  I used them.  I appreciated them.  I made the best of them.  Columbus allowed this.  Columbia did for a while, until I sang, "Sour grapes."  Then I was quelled.  I was quelled romantically and professionally. I did not take it personally, and I moved on.  The South is not a forgiving place.  Her people are proud, selfish, and oppressive.  That is because they want things to remain the same.  The status quo is good enough the way it is, because they are in power.  There is not enough room for another step, so you must fall.  I will not fall again.  I am smart enough to discard my vanity, my ambitions, and my love life and move forward.  Still they are trying to take them away.  

Porkulus, Hillary Clinton, and the Self-Driving Car

The presidential race nicely is playing itself.  "I think Hillary would make a terrible president," says Mr. Trump.  I have to agree with him that she was the worst Secretary of State in history.  In all probability Mr. Trump does not know each and every Secretary of State in America's history, and his view is an opinion.  It also is a generalization.  It is hyperbole.  He is speaking figuratively.  Figuratively is the way the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted the language in the Affordable Care Act concerning federal versus state sponsored exchanges for the purchasing of government subsidized health insurance.  Reason triumphed.  Those crafting the president's health care law could not foresee every possible legislative inroad.  Thank goodness SCOTUS understood this and ruled in favor of the greater issue.  They ruled in favor of the greater good.  Trump is generalizing about Hillary Clinton, and you could not expect him to contrast and compare her performance with each and every Secretary State in the history of America.  That would take much study, and he is busy making millions of dollars building hotels and such.  While I am sure there have been worse Secretary's of State in the history of America, my impression has been the same.  During her four year tenure as the head of the State Department, there was very little about her agenda in the national news.  We saw little of her at all.  Comparatively we saw and heard a lot about Dame Madeleine Albright.  She seemed to enjoy this position of international liaison, and her scholarly accomplishments would have honed her skills as a diplomat.  Hillary not so much.  Everyone knew her appointment by President Obama was a token.  This view is an opinion.  It also is a generalization.  It is hyperbole, but we can choose to believe it or not.  Without ever having seen any of her accomplishments as head of the State Department, I would agree.  The Secretary of State is a large public figure.  We hear about John Kerry fairly often, and he seems visibly active in the job.  The only time Hillary was in the national news was when U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith were killed by Islamic militants at the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.  Possibly no news is good news.  The presidential race nicely is playing itself.  It is difficult to describe the freak show other than comparing it to the Theatre of the Absurd.  All communication breaks down, because human existence has no meaning or purpose, but it does.  To make money. This is not the platform of the United States Presidency, but I am not sure any of the candidates knows what it is.  I am certain they do not understand that successfully interacting with Congress to pass useful legislation for the American people is necessary.  This is an anachronism.  It now is defunct.  No longer is it possible.  This is a opinion.  It is a generalization.  It is hyperbole, but we can choose to believe it or not.  I agree.  It has been obvious.  Our Congress is the biggest bunch of dough boy, radical, incompetent, on-the-take losers in Americas history.  They are political farce, and we should treat them this way.  President Obama has chosen to recognize this issue by evoking his executive powers to make necessary changes for the good of the people.  In the scope of history a coup should be near, but we have been brainwashed by poisoned food, endless propaganda, and technology.  We are so frustrated by our unhappiness and yet lack of ability to object to it, we are the perfect product of the Republican Party.  While we eat pink slime at McDonalds, savvy legislators are busy looking for every loophole in the law to allow them to fuck us more.  Fuck the American people.  That is the new motto of the United States.  Not, "We the people," not "Four score and seven years ago," and not "I pledge of allegiance to our flag."  Fuck the people and especially fuck the young people of America.  We have been doing that since Mr. Bush was president.  Want to go to college?  Lean over.  Technology has contributed to this breakdown.  Why put cops on the street in Fayettenam, when we can put cameras on traffic lights and sit in a room drinking coffee and eating donuts?  Is it any surprise that this Wall Street tactic of moving money around is not helping the crime rate?  You can't move criminals around from a little room with computer models.  Technology contributed to this problem.  Technology has contributed to the gross and continual decline in education in America.  While America's job structure drastically has changed in recent years, abandoning the humanities as a starting place for education has not been helpful.  Now we have tech-savvy sociopaths, students who have not learned the lessons of history by being exposed to them.  Truly we have created a new generations of zombies, and it is frightening.  They want self-driving cars?  What will you be doing when the car is driving, texting or loading your AR-15?  

Technology Nerds and Philanthropy

I don't write well to Baroque or Classical music.  I enjoy aspects of both with baroque music providing the most interest for my ear.  There is something about Telemann, Vivaldi, or Albinoni that gets your blood moving.  It is interesting that music composed from 1600 to 1750 after the Renaissance has this particular tendency. Of particular note and also is heard often in the music of Handel is the continuo in combination with the string orchestra.  Possibly this can be the most defining characteristic of baroque music.  (At least its the easy one.)  Basso continuo is an interesting concept that makes use of figured bass.  The keyboardist is given symbols representative of the harmonies or chords they must play along with the orchestra.  If I remember correctly these chords are represented by the intervals of the chord tones from the bass note.  Also the numerals used in harmonic analysis are helpful, in particular chord inversions.  Simple inversions are 6 and 6/4 for a triad, and 6/5, 4/3, and 4/2 for a dominant seventh.  Interestingly these numeric representations of harmony are not dissimilar from what jazz musicians use to realize their tunes.  While it is a different nomenclature, fundamentally it is the same.  The other difference is the melody of the tune is written on the staff rather than a bass line by someone like J.S. Bach.  All of this aside I like the vigor of Baroque music.  Vivaldi was a pioneer, and I am finding that most music of interest to me at age 52 is anything but what I hear in the current year of 2015.  The same is true for television and film.  This leads me to a disturbing realization.  It also has led to an increased aptitude to learn more about music history.  When mainstream media is talking about self-driving cars, then only do I want to lower my head in shame at the state of philanthropy in America.  We have been misled as a populace, and it is new money that has done this.  Always I have known that walking around staring at one's palm is no way to live, yet we still do it.  Increasingly I see the flock of lambs nibble away at the ripe grass of technology.  It is because that enticing screen, full of its sound bites, entertaining graphics, and purported connectivity is better than what we are experiencing in the world around us.  Let's face it, America sucks.  I do not way that because I want FBI sponsored Cessna aircraft flying over my home tomorrow morning.  They will do that anyway.  Crime is high in Fayettenam, and they are not solving any of it from way up there.  What they are doing is invading my privacy, my peace of mind, and my humanity.  Can you imagine what it is like to have a disturbing, menacing, low-flying aircraft circling your home for hours?  I can, because it happens often.  It happened today, and for the first time I realized its purpose.  Its stated purpose is unknown.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a covert fleet of small aircraft for surveillance purposes.  They are operated incognito with fake companies to ensure the safety of its pilots.  How could these pilots be endangered flying high above our heads.  It has entered my mind a few times and against my will.  Why would I spend one waking second thinking about a circling aircraft above my home?  I wouldn't be if it weren't there.  What the fuck?  The Fayetteville Observer reported recently that these planes in all likelihood would continue, because the FBI has been using them for some time.  For what?  The crime rater in Fayetteville is higher than most places, and it is not coming down.  They can fly all of the planes they want, take all of the photographs they want, and review all the video they want and the crime will continue.  Its constituents have nothing else to do, because they are poor.  Dire circumstances produce crime.  I learned this when I had clothing stolen from an outdoor laundry in Columbia, South Carolina at an apartment complex where I was living.  When I walked into the laundry and saw my blue jeans had been stolen, I also saw the perpetrators sitting in their car less then ten feet away.  They were poor.  They were poorly dressed, hence their need for clothing.  They were poorly nourished.  They were poorly groomed.  I understood, and quickly I bit my tongue and made note of the incident for future purposes.  Cessna seems to be the aircraft of choice, and while this small plane is not crucial to our national defense possibly it is part of the defense contracting lobby in Washington, DC.  I have come to realize that these companies largely are responsible for the wars in America.  How else can they stay in business?  With Ft. Bragg being one of the largest military installations in the world less then a few miles away, these large aeronautic companies are close by.  Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman top my list.  Second and more important to the overall economy of the United States are technology companies.  Fuck them.  Other than making computing faster, nothing has happened in this arena in fifteen years.  I remember when I used to surf the net on Netscape Navigator, until Microsoft became a bully and demanded that its Internet Explorer be bundled with their Windows operating system.  This action resulted in an anti-trust case initiated and won by the United States Department of Justice.  Microsoft appealed the case and they settled.  Microsoft bullied its competition, something that many American companies continue to do.  The South has continued to fight the Civil War, since the Yankees won.  They have nothing else to do.  Money has influence in America, and more than it has in our recent history.  We are entering a cycle that harkens back to other periods in American history, and it is unnerving.  Trust is the operative word, and they are in control.  It completely is illogical to allow recently acquired money to coin America's agenda.  This is what has been happening, and most obviously it can be seen in the demise of television.  Only the internet can be responsible for this death, and who can say it is a good thing?  With America's deniable addiction to the small screen, television is a thing of the past.  Designers know it.  A small group of creators are corrupting the minds of Americans without our even knowing it.  Every bit it is as strong as heroin, because ironically our environment has been so polluted by corporate America we must have something to make us happy.  No longer can the cool breeze of a spring day bring contentment to a person.  No longer can the refreshing taste of cold mountain water quench our thirst.  No longer can the soothing silence of a peaceful meadow provide a mattress for adolescent infatuation.  Our environment is shit, and it is shit because off all the airplanes, the cell phone towers, the automobiles, and diesel trains.  With the burning of fossil fuels threatening the earth, how can anyone with a conscience even think about self-driving cars?  It is insane.  With all the money Google has think about all the philanthropic deeds that could be done.  Think of how many abandoned animals could be saved.  Think of how many mouths could be fed.  It is an atrocity, self-driving cars, and I am embarrassed to be an American.  

America's Giant Flim Flam

It is difficulty to discern reality.  I can imagine when the telegraph first appeared on the prairie in the Midwest.  Farmers on the rolling plains had a way to communicate with civilization.  Then came radio, a monumental breakthrough in rural life in America.  Television was next.  What was the first newspaper in America?  I would hope that the newspaper would remain as the most steadfast and thorough of the news reporting agencies, but evidently they are struggling.  In three years time internet news reporting has declined in quality at least 50%.  It is the luck of the draw if anything you read on Reuters, the BBC, or Yahoo News is worthy of attention.  Then there is the Warren Buffet lobby.  If I see or hear this ridiculous story one more time, I will know infallibly internet news reporting is a Five and Dime.  They say Buffet has invested in Geico automobile insurance.  It is rather common knowledge Google is working on a self-driving car.  Supposedly Mr. Buffet is shaking in his designer loafers, because car insurance will become unnecessary.  Do you think this is possible?  With health insurance as one of the largest economic systems in America making a few people rich, is it really feasible that the car insurance lobby will allow this to happen to them?  I think not.  Further I have no interest in a self-driving car.  It is the most idiotic thing of which ever I have heard.  It's not going to happen.  Trying building a subway, a trolley, or a streetcar all of which run on electricity.  This is exemplary of the grossly misguided direction of America's young entrepreneurs.  They are out of touch with reality.  Never have I seen a bubble that is so padded with technology money the inventors themselves are living a life up their own asses.  Google is great, and I use it daily.  A search engine company do not philosophers make.  Leave that to the Cohen Brothers.  Plainly and simply the wealth in the world today is in the wrong hands.  The balance has tipped to the side of nerds writing computer code.  Bill Gates has a foundation.  So does Bill Clinton.  Who is doing more for the world?  It is unquestionable that popular culture in America in the last decade screamingly has left the freeway in a uncontrolled lurch.  It is out of control.  One only has to flick on the tube and what recently has become a news story readily is apparent.  We are being scammed.  We are being railroaded.  We are being swindled of both our lives and our money.  Viva Wall Street!  If only now America is becoming concerned that our youth has an addiction problem, we are below the curve.  In previous generations promiscuous gay sex, snorting cocaine, and drinking and driving all have been considered damaging behaviors.  They were well-recognized.  Today our addictions are new, covert, and clever.  They have been slipped into our drinks, under our noses, and into our veins as coolly as the serpent offering up a bite of that apple to Eve in the Garden of Eden.  They're cool, boy.  It is time to pony up, rejuvenate American journalism, and flush the muck.  FLUSH THE MUCK.  

A Mother's Displacement

As another day passes with no sleep, my body aches.  The necessary decompression that must occur for the body to rejuvenate is overdue.  I will have to find a place to sleep in the near future.   I cannot continue in this fashion, because unless there is some subliminal reason why I deserve to be tortured, I cannot expend the majority of my waking energy fending off  bullshit.  That is what I do in Fayettenam.  I feel there are others in my shoes.  I am not the only one struggling to get through each day maintaining a semblance of sanity.  I have curtailed my intake of bourbon, which was my cure for insomnia.  The brutal reality now besets me.  I have known this to be true for some time, but I am in a period of denial.  I am doing my best to live normally in an abnormal place for me.  The solution has been to discard my usual life of music and substitute a life of mundanity.  I do not dislike this mundanity.  It is comforting. It is the only thing allowing me get through each day maintaining a semblance of sanity.  Music does not work.  I have known this for some time.  Because my parents lives have revolved around music for so long, and because my parents are geriactrics,  music only causes me pain.  Either it reminds them of what they no longer have, or it reminds me of what I no longer have.  Over the years I have learned not to be a fatalist. It is not inevitable, and it is not productive.  Contrarily one must adopt an attitude of faith.  Things can and will change, and there are circumstances of existence that predicate stagnation. Life in America today is one of them.  Slowly I am realizing this, and it does not make my plight any more palatable.  Not only am I battling my parents' musical demons, I am battling a gross and widespread public ignorance and lack of respect of the arts.  It is pretty dismal.  Also I have learned that as an artist one can lead society.  When things get dark as they are now (the Dark Ages) a Renaissance can be created by the creativity, intellect, and tenacity of artists.  I fall into that catogory.  It, while dabbling in artistic activity, it crucial to remain cognizant of reality.  My reality is I am living in the home of my geriatric parents.  My father has moved on to a nursing facilty, but my mother is left.  My position is not that much different than hers, when she was experiencing the dementia of my father.  I am watching her slowly fade away back to something with which I am not familiar.  It is a challenge being pushed and prodded daily by what seems like a selfish child.  It is a power struggle, and I cannot lose.  If I do, my parents will outlive me.  My grandmother achieved this outliving one of her sons at the age of 104.  I am not willing to give up my musical responsibility yet, and it is not selfish.  In certain ways I was chosen for this job, and I listen to the Creator.  He is not around much these days, and as I reflect never was He present while I have lived in 'Nam.  This is a clear indicator that 'Nam is hell.  Truly for me it is a living hell.  Experiencing it is not unlike the other hellish episodes I have had in my life.  It is interesting most of these revolve around Fayetteville.  It is because my parents are here. Consequently instead of engaging in a singular life of music, I am engaging in a plural life of family.  As the son I have very little control.  It possiblty is the greatest political challenge, navigating the aging of your parents.  With no sleep the prospect of being productive with my artistic music is naught.  You cannot be productive when you are too tired to think.  Consequently you act instinctually, and this I loathe.  This is how my aging mother operates.  Instead of thinking about issues and addressing them with logic, she engages in stream-of-consciousness drama on a high scale.  It has gotten worse.  In the last few weeks my ears are so tired from hearing this unfiltered barrage of disjunct communication.  I'm not sure it can be called communication.  It is not.  She is not talking to me.  She is talking at me only reflecting each and every minute detail of her day.  I am required like a mindless five-year-old to sit and listen.  It is numbing, emotionally taxing, and depressing.  In addition to my lack of sleep the majority of my waking hours are as a sponge listening to irrelevant b.s.  At times I have tried to explain that this indulgence in selfish actualization is detrimental.  It is.  Nothing that she experiences and therefore conveys to me in a mindless discourse is productive in any way.  Contrarily it is harmful, and this is why she feels the need to displace it on me.  My ears are tired, as is my soul.  

So This is What I Know

I know if you complain about a lobby-protected corporate entity who kills Americans with petroleum fires, they lower the hammer on your head.  If I lodge a formal complaint against a lobby-protected corporate entity on their website about lack of managerial oversight at a local substation, they lower the hammer on your head.  Railroad employees always have done this, because like police officers carrying around too much firepower gives them an inflated sense of power.  Screw your civil rights.  I'm driving a 4000 horsepower locomotive, and I will drive it right up to your house and leave it sitting there idling for the next three days, and there is not a damn thing you can do about it.  Via America.  I know that while once I was a Hillary supporter, once also never was I an athletic supporter.  I don't like to support balls.  I don't want to support a former Secretary of State who sold her political influence under the guise of the Clinton Foundation.  Read the book.  I believe it is due out soon.  I know that after a heartfelt week of successful American civil rights, on Monday the shit storm of American media began.  What used to be thoughtful, spiritual, and Christian reporting in journalism now is the bottom of the barrel tabloid Jerry Springer.  Never have I seen so many concocted, false, and slanderous posts concerning a milestone in American history.  I have decided that while I do not support gays in the military, allowing gays to marry affords them all of the same rights straight couples reap.  Misery, infidelity, suicide, and the list goes on.  Enjoy!  If media had one fifth of a brain, the news will create itself in a few short years.  Hold your wad, Tonto.  I know that while as a country we still engage in sentimental, patriotic, Americanisms America has become a crock of shit.  It is a better crock of shit than ISIL, but the ideology is the same.  Let's kill our enemy and destroy the planet as quickly as possible.  Then we'll have no place to decapitate Christians.  Sorry, I think with my minuscule Islamic penis.  I could be screwing women without killing them, but then again God never has really given good advice.  The meat is better when it is cold.  How many more oil trains must derail and explode, before the FRA decides to do something about it?  Oh, I forgot.  It will take a class action lawsuit or at least five bands singing about it for a decade.  Then things may start a changing.....   I know I really dislike my neighborhood and all of its shysters who take people's money and give them shit.  For instance I have lost a tooth and a half.  The other half cost me three hundred dollars to fix.  I know that there are thieves around, especially on a holiday weekend, and they are in for a big surprise when quiet tempered Paul breaks out the artillery when someone gets too close to the house.  Enjoying solitude in the yard comes at a price, the price of quite a few loaded guns and rifles sitting around in easy reach.  It will be like a video game.  Can you get to the loaded gun without getting killed first?  Try it.  It only costs a quarter, and your life.  I know that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security do not like the electric bass, especially when it is played loud enough to vibrate the walls of your house.  Their surveillance systems don't hold a candle to the electric bass.  I am glad my hands are feeling better, and I have a new patch cord.  I know how to build a French drain the main vein. It helps divert standing water.  I know how spot nice garbage on the side of the street and when to go get it.  I know now that American symphonic music is a complete and total bust.  It's all about film music and the sound stage.  I'm buying DVD's now.  Too bad there is no radio station that plays film music.  I know that American alcohol like the rest of our food now is shit.  We have a bourbon crisis, and it all tastes like Jack Daniels.  That underground spring they use is spewing up syrup.  Scotch, Ms Moneypenny, but we can't afford that here in 'ca.  Who knew a peat bog could be used for such a quality result?  The Scottish.  I'm one quarter Scottish, one quarter Irish, and one half German.  Wagner.  Strauss.  Then there were the Russians.  We can't forget John O'Connor, and his illegitimate son Donald O'Connor.  Peace out.  (and I mean, "Now.")

Tchaikovsky's 1812, the N.C. Symphony, and a Great Spectacle

I was fortunate to hear the North Carolina Symphony perform Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture last night at the Reed Lallier -sponsored 4th of July celebration in Festival Park in Fayetteville.  The park was teeming, and it was a rowdy appreciative crowd.  As a doctoral level composer, something I keep to myself, it was obvious to me this overture by Tchaikovsky was the most representative piece of the evening.  Using the adjective representative I mean a piece which represents the art and craft of musical composition.  There were a variety of good arrangements on the program, but being the birthday celebration of America necessitated a patriotic-themed program.  There were nationalist pieces from both the Civil and Revolutionary Wars.  Terry Mizesco, the symphony's bass trombonist and composer of "Sketches from Pinehurst," arranged three of these.  There was a guest baritone vocalist, who did his best to actualize an authentic rendition of "Old Susanna."  It was comical but good.  As a doctoral level composer, something I keep to myself, it was comical because an issue was aired that is passé.  It is passé, because jazz is passé in America.  America's true art form is not understood by her current populace.  I am not sure they even are aware of it.  Once upon a time in a land far away there was this thing called jazz.  It was music of African, European, Canadian, and American origin.  It is not common knowledge that the Acadians sailed from Canada down America's east coast to the port of New Orleans where they settled.  It was  more temperate.  The term Cajun is short for Acadian, and they are of French origin.  Jazz is a melting pot, and that is what makes it interesting in its purest form.  We are not exposed even to fringe jazz anymore in America.  The idea that was aired as this guest baritone vocalist begin to sing was lack of swing.  He didn't really swing.  As he sang the words to "Old Susanna" it was if a stiff British opera singer was trying to impersonate an African-American.  His dialect or accent was not inaccurate and far from the roots of American music.  America is a melting pot, so there is a lot of room in which to wiggle.  His performance was the perfect musical metaphor for, "White men can't dance."  It has been a long time, since I was exposed to this musical issue.  No one swings anymore in America, so what is the issue?  The issue is his rendition was not authentic.  The symphony's rendition of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was authentic, but they get a lot of practice performing music composed by a Russian homosexual.  [sic] Always I have liked Tchaikovsky's music.  He is an excellent orchestrator, and in particular his writing for wind instruments is exemplary.  I can tell it is Tchaikovsky by the scoring of the winds within the orchestra.  What was representative of this work was its form.  Form in composition is what happens from the beginning of the piece to the end.  It is apparent as the overture unfolds that Tchaikovsky emotionally is committed to the work.  He emotes, because things happen for a reason at the right moments in the form.  The orchestration and the rhythms are the most obvious example of this expression.  He uses a variety of metric-type modulations to create tension and release.  It, unlike a Sousa march, does not tool along at one hundred and twenty beats per minute.  It breathes, it evolves, and then it climaxes.  As a doctoral level composer, something I keep to myself, this is what engages me.  I listen to the piece as if it were my own, because I can hear these ideas represented in sound.  Theses are things a composer utilizes.  I wondered if these musical elements were apparent to the rest of the audience.  They were simplistic, and they were obvious, but did they make sense to the other listeners in the same way they did to me?  I could feel Tchaikovsky's emotional flow in the music, his personal expression.  Not many know he was a frustrated homosexual.  I love the music of Aaron Copland also, and he was a homosexual.  I found it to be quite surprising how large and supportive this audience was of orchestral music.  Orchestral music is not for everyone, but I think particularly here in Fayetteville it is in vogue to frequent the symphony.  Often I do not enjoy it, because it is pretentious.  The North Carolina Symphony was not, but its presentation was.  Jazz also has become this way in America.  Why must I stand up and cheer to appreciate quality music?  My life itself does not represent "rah rah."  I have no reason to "rah rah" an orchestra.  Fayetteville is a bit immature in her understanding and appreciation of art.  For some reason the artistic community here is compelled to "rah rah" just about everything they do.  In Columbus, Ohio or Columbia, South Carolina where I have lived, we actualized the music because it was natural.  It was an essential part of one's everyday existence.  It didn't make sense to "rah rah."  The musician's didn't require it.  Music making was a humble experience.  In Fayetteville it is different.  Listeners are encouraged to "rah rah" like it was a sporting event.  Music is more than just a stream-of-consciencness venting of emotion.  It is expressive.  It expresses something of a greater value more than merely supporting an orchestra.  There are a variety of reasons why patrons today are unable to understand this.  They have become known to me in the last few months.   I have come to understand living in Fayetteville, the full realm of human intellect is not possible.  Our physical being is being assaulted too much and too often.  We spend the majority of our time trying to make sense of this assault and trying to maintain our meager lives.  Rarely are we allowed to exist in an unadulterated form giving our minds the needed pastoralism to think great thoughts.  Instead we fend off bullshit.  I have come to understand I live four distinct and separate existences.  They are a physical life, an intellectual life, a subconscious life, and a fantasy life.  When I dream I am in the subconscious.  When I wake I am in the physical life.  Rarely am I in the intellectual life, because it takes discipline.  I am not allowed to be in the intellectual life, because I am too busy fending off bullshit rendered to me in the physical life.  It's a drag expending all of your energy on uncreative thoughts surviving.  This is what America has become.