Damn America

So the truth of music history is this.  We live in the times of the music we have studied.  Also we live in the times in which the music lives.  (the music lives in the time in which is it composed)  The disparity between when the music is composed and when it is recognized, understood, and felt is the void.  What is the void?  The void is the black hole between times of Enlightment.  The Dark Ages.  In America music history is waiting to be discovered.  The 20th Century, the 1900's have cemented themselves as important as any period in music history, and yet they are unstudied.  On a miniscule level they have been experienced, and yet those who experienced them are not vocal.  They are not supportive.  They are are not viable.  It would seem recent history forgets itself quickly, just as sleep deprives short term memories from becoming long term memories.  The Viet Nam era, its strife and loss, are a fleeting moment in American history.  How is this possible?  Fifty years ago, war raging, rampant political unrest is forgotten.  Today all of it is exactly the same, rebranded, re-booted, recast into selfish, faggot, extremist fodder.  Damn. 

The Business of War

Nobody much has the stomach for my blog entries.  I guess I could be considered to be an asshole, but I'm not.  Moving back home, where we all well know you can't go, a new set of problems beset me.  Upon careful scrutiny this new set of problems are not new at all.  They are the same problems I had years ago growing up in this same place.  The people are the same, hence the problems are the same.  The problems really should be considered obstacles, obstacles of others' short-sighted views.  God and our friends tell us never to worry about what other people think of us.  I am positive Joel Osteen would preach the same thing.  Therapy.  Who cares what others think of us?  Wake up and smell the coffee.  What is society other than a group of human beings who must work together?  There are few situations in which human beings operate autonomously.  Perhaps Jeff Bezos began this way sitting in a lonely garage brokering sales to internet customers.  Eventually in a plural society we must work together.  It is a small world, and that is true.  You must worry about what other think about you if you want any friends.  Possibly there was a time or a situation when human beings acted civilly and with Christian faith.  Those times in America are long gone so it would seem.  Perhaps still you can be a "nice guy" and get along.  I have changed my opinion about this.  (My left ear now is screaming from tinnitus.  The 82nd Airborne is readying for deployment, and their aircraft fly just above the treeline over our yard)  Also their railhead at the  Honeycutt Marshalling Yard is in full swing.  The army has Gen-Set locomotives which shut themselves down when not in use.  That is not the protocol here.  When the military are readying for deployment they spend countless days and nights loading munition trains at Fort Bragg.  We are so fortunate that the army saw fit to bury part of their mainline underneath Reilly Road.  Rumor is they have been building loading ramps that go directly underground to load munitions on these trains.  Anyone familiar with the Taos Hum knows what that creates.  Hmmmmmm.  Put an AC locomotive underneath the ground and use it as a switcher, and what you get is not only hum sounds but leaking electricity.  The Taos Hum was a complex entity, and it took me six months to unravel its source.  I have written about it before.  The company responsible for the Taos Hum was General Electric.  The source of my tinnitus is both aircraft and trains, the only things capable of producing infrasound and ultrasound at such a great volume level it causes the lost frequencies in your ears to ring.  My left ear is a good litmus test for train and plane activity.  While I don't like it, it is not the most destructive force in my life.  There are others.  While I am worrying about what other people think about me and trying to mitigate the staunch LGBT movement surrounding me, the United States military, the FBI, private corporations, and government politicians are making my life a living hell.  How you may ask?  How is it possible that these outside forces are impactful on my state of psychological health?  Mostly it is because of the military and their protocol for war.  They train very close by to murder our enemies.  They practice killing in many ways.  With that training comes a presence of defense contractors, intelligence agencies, military officials of high rank, and Washingtonian politicians.  Fort Bragg has become in the last decade a very high profile installation.  If one looks at a Google map you will see the plethora of underground installations recently built at Fort Bragg.  You will not see the portion of their mainline railroad track that is disguised in a tunnel underneath Reilly road.  We live in the Age of Electricity.  It has been predicted by many.  Past president Bill Clinton largely was responsible for this era.  He auctioned off microwave frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum formerly that had been classified as dangerous to human beings.  With one fell swoop of his presidential quill the telecommunications industry was revolutionized.  Once America had to break up the telephone company into "Baby Bells" to avoid a massive corporate monopoly.  Today this is exactly what we have again.  Since George W. Bush repealed most regulatory legislation governing corporate America's economic mechanism has morphed into an undecipherable, complex, and unfair system for producing capital.  It favors the rich.  Along with this cancerous economic system we systematically have miseducated our youth.  I am coining a word here, but it is true.  America purposely has stymied the intellect of her younger generation to empower the rich all ready in power.  We have so many problems all ready, but the real problem has become the rich ruling class are proving themselves to be evil doers.  They are dropping like flies around us.  I can handle intellectual obstacles, because I enjoy solving problems.  What an American cannot mitigate is torture.  The poisoning of well and ground water at Camp Lejune is well documented.  A dozen claims a week still are being processed of illness, death, and pain created by the Marine Corp's polluting of the ground water near Jacksonville, NC.  If our own military has been responsible for such deeds, killing innocent American citizens, then it should become clear against what we are up.  The needs of the United States military, her personnel, governance, and support are more important than the American people they are supposed to protect.  This is a difficult pill to swallow, but not if you live in Fayettenam.  The defense industry and our military are not concerned with our well being.  They are concerned with themselves.  The same people about who I worry what they think of me will disagree, because they are the same people.  I am surrounded by selfish boobs who have no philosophy of life, no conscience, and no awareness of human reality.  I am self indulgent enough to have an emotional lapse that is allowing me to grovel in self pity.  While I generally am not lonely or needy of human companionship, when life around you becomes so unbearable to remain human one must acknowledge reality.  My reality is I have few friends.  What once were Facebook friends mostly have proven they have lost their own minds.  Truly if I do look at my own situation, it doesn't hold much water.  It is not often I get down about it.  Others say every time you make plans God laughs.  I disagree.  You plan your work and work your plan, and yet my own plan has become disguised.  I am too busy fighting for my own survival against my own environment.  The war zone of Fayettenam is real, and the covert fighting force of the defense industry and the United States military and its governance do not care about average people.  They are too busy inciting war to keep themselves in business. 

Artistry in Rhythm

Nothing is more insipid than Emanuel Ax playing Brahms.  On the other hand nothing is more inspiring than Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven.  That is the way music is it would seem.  Keith Jarrett recording "The Koln Concert," not jazz, and yet it is the most selling solo jazz piano recording of all time.  It is because it is not jazz.  I listened to "Tapestry" the other day.  It is a lovely recording, and it became clear to me as I listened to it what popular music is.  There is so much disparity about these two words.  Popular Music.  In a nutshell there is much more to its definition.  Put simply "pop" music is a rhythm style forged from the guitar which serves a particular musical and emotional need for the populace.  It accomplishes this goal in several ways.  One, as jazz players realized early on,  "pop" tunes are simple melodies that transcend  hearsay.  Pop is a morphing of words, story, melody, harmony, and orchestration that combine into an effective transcendent vehicle for sensory enjoyment.  Carol King is not the most accomplished singer, but her songs are honest as are her performances.  They achieve her point and convey that point to her listening audience.  Thus the definition of Popular Music is credible in this discussion.  Why is Emanuel Ax playing Brahms not appealing to me?  The answer is the same reason why Keith Jarrett's "Koln Concert" is not appealing to me.  The emotional and aesthetic expression do not reach me.  To enjoy these performances you must have a similarity of soul.  What the musicians are saying in their performances must resonate with your personal experiences.  It is possible to learn to feel what they are expressing in time if one so chooses.  Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven moves me.  His interpretation rises above Beethoven's notes and captures a pure expression of soul and feeling.  It is marvelous.  How can you teach that?  If you work on a cruise ship playing piano, the Musical Director is all anxious that his pianist can play "colla voce."  Colla voce is an Italian musical term which instructs the pianist to follow the solo vocal performance.  The pianist must follow the timing, phrasing, and dynamics of the vocalists performance.  This is a common requirement for pianists, and any pianist with a traditional academic education will have some experience playing colla voce.  The key is HOW does one do this?  Do you watch the vocalist?  Obviously you listen to them, because that is a basic requirement of good musicianship.  Listening while performing on one's instrument may be the best advice one can get, especially in jazz music.  It does not apply to all musical situations and especially today.  So called musicians are so poorly trained and amateur many of the rules of professional music do not apply.  Try your first cruise ship gig playing with a track.  The most unpleasant and not enjoyable gigs are ones where the musicians do not listen to one another and attempt to play together.  If a song is going to be successful on the pop charts, you better believe that the musicians are on the same page musically speaking.  They are going to "hit" in the same place, which means the interpret the time or the groove the same way.  In music you can play in front of, behind, and in the middle of the beat.  Doing so creates tension in the music that often is desirable.  It is interesting that the "pop" groove as I have come to understand it uses a permutation of this formula.  The rhythm tracks stretch forward and backward so to leave space in the middle for the vocal.  Jazz music does not do this, because the transparent nature of acoustic drums and bass do not get in the way of the piano sound.  The piano sound itself is very unique in that it too is transparent in some ways.  Ironically the "pop" groove has infiltrated the jazz scene and often when you are hearing a so-called jazz song the bass and drums actually are playing what I call the "Pop" groove.  It does not interest me really, because jazz did not originate with this rhythmic feel.  In most successful jazz all the players in the group hit in the same place.  Therefore it swings.  Most cruise ship bands don't swing, and thus they play the "pop" groove by default without really knowing it.  Try playing along with this rhythmic accompaniment and you will realize you must change your rhythmic and technical approach to the piano.  You must play like Leon Russell, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, or the rest of the pop players.  Physically they approach the piano in a way very different from what is taught in either classical or jazz technique.  In ways it is an abandonment of the principles of effective piano playing, because the fingers strike the keys in a seeming uncontrolled many.  Interestingly there are varying approaches to the "pop" piano technique, and I witnessed most of them while accompanying Guest Entertainers on cruise ships.  You can stab the key with outstretched and stiff fingers.  You can swipe at the keys with limp noodles.  You can play penguin style like Stevie Wonder and hang your fingers over the keyboard as so to be very close to the keyboard.  This is a necessity if you can't see the keyboard, so perhaps being blind was one root of the pop piano style.  Certainly Ray Charles exploited this approach physically playing from side to side with his arms.  Leon Russell plays between his hands in an extremely small rhythmic pocket  also undulating from side to side.  It could be described as the difference between playing single stroke or double stroke with a drum stick.  Try tapping on a snare drum with a stick with only one hand over and over.  Then try doing the same thing but alternating from hand to hand.  Truly this is the difference in the "pop" feel.  The pop feel alternates, and it often is an alternation between the feet and the hands.  It is common for the notes to swing a little bit between very much like a basic strumming pattern on the acoustic guitar.  If you loosen your wrist, the notes will swing a little bit between your down and up strokes.  If the feel solely can be created with this motion and not an emotion, it has the potential to be devoid of passion.  It could have no real feeling at all as does most superficial pop music today performed by con artists.  Music that should be appreciated should have feeling, an emotional expression that shapes the sound and rhythm.  Igor Stravinsky might disagree, because he has said that music itself has no capability to express emotion on its own.  Discuss.  Without feeling or passion art will not mean much, and if that passion is not somehow related to the reality in which we live, it will be more nondescript.  If artists cannot discern their reality and thus express an opinion about it thought music, then the man has won. 

The Prick, the Thistle, and the Wardrube.

There is an artistic community in Fayetteville, and there is no better symbol of it than the Fayetteville Symphony Orchestra.  Begun in the living room of the Grimes family on Skye Drive, Harlan Deno and his band of merry violins began an orchestra that with the aid of old school fortunes has developed into a stellar musical performing group.  Luckily there is a well established lineage in orchestra music.  I have been lucky to have studied it.  At different times there have been other notable artistic venues in Fayetteville.  There is the Cape Fear Regional Theater begun by Bo Thorp and Lee Yopp.  There is Sweet Tea and Shakespeare, and there is the Gilbert Theater.  I have but one thing to say about theater in general.  It is a lost art.  Why is it a lost art?  It is a lost art, because you shouldn't parody your soul.  Instead you should understand and nurture your soul.  American theater today is nothing more than a drag show, even if it doesn't want to be.  Even if the shows are straight the ill effects of homosexuality taint the soul of theater.  That is because you shouldn't parody your own soul.  Do we really want to see Billy Bigalo in drag?  No.  Is "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" a viable Broadway show?  Yes, but it understands itself.  If you don't understand heterosexuality and you misplay it, it is insipid.  America's sexuality today is insipid, because everyone is confused.  We are too busy questioning our genitalia rather than following our innate passions.  If you can't play the play straight, then it doesn't make sense.  The cruise industry is a major player in the corruption of American theater.  In one particular show the female production singer belts, "I am the Man of La Mancha."  No she isn't, and it doesn't make sense for her to sing that.  Just like anything is jazz, anything goes in theater.  That is so far from the truth.  The soul of theater is sexuality, and to it must be adhered.  I have seen so many shows in Fayetteville which brazenly disregard this precept.  I have seen reputable Broadway shows unknowingly brought down by callus and selfish homosexuality.  Theatre in its purest sense doesn't go both ways.  It can go the way of Hedwig, and when it does it can be successful.  You can't make a drag show of everything, especially Carousel.  It happens often.  I was reading about T.S. Elliot, and it was no surprise that while writing his series of children's books he disliked sexuality in general.  He felt children should not have to grow up.  His work reflects that sentiment, and to me it is insipid watching adults dress up in animal costumes and make believe.  Why would anyone pay to see this?  Why would anyone pay to watch two adult men actors talk on stage?  I mean talk in the most boring, monotone, meaningless manner imaginable in the sake of acting and theater.  "Trumbo" was a resounding failure, and no one in Fayetteville will say it.  Instead they sell season tickets, so that the quality of the production is shielded from harm.  If the show is no good it doesn't matter.  All ready it is bought and paid for.  "Trumbo" was the most insulting play ever I have seen, because the essence of acting was absent.  It seems America is loosing touch with the craft of acting.  It is not a surprise.  Without sexuality, passion, and emotion talk is cheap and boring.  Certainly we should not pay $30.00 to hear two people talk on stage about nothing much.  We were patrons of a recent show in Fayetteville, and it bore no resemblance to anything theatrical.  There were no sets.  There were no props.  There was no lighting.  Most of all there was no acting.  They didn't know how to act, and above all they didn't know what acting was.  It was a mockery of theater, and yet the people clapped.  They clapped because their "people" were in the show.  That is not good enough.  I watched this void of sexuality, its androgynous limp-wristed attempt at theater and was stymied.  Adults dressed as animals saying words with no meaning.  Talk about self-indulgent.  Theater deserves more than this, and now that theater has become jazz it is time to take a moment to review the vehicle which theater is.  It is not mindless, sexless, fairy tales hiding from reality.  It is human reality in this world, not Narnia.  Please Mr. Elliot, go back to your ivory tower and jump off. 

Ensuing War

Luckily last night when I was surfing through Direct TV's plethora of useless channels, I happened upon "Fosse."  I don't remember which network on which it was, but I was delighted to watch any television programming that uses art as a subject.  I was familiar with Bob Fosse.  I remembered he created "Jazz Hands."  He was a prominent Broadway choreographer.  Sometimes I get him confused with Bob Mackie.  While working for the cruise lines I had to play music for Sweet Charity, Cabaret, and other popular Broadway musicals.  Since then I have developed a deeper interest in dance.  Be careful not to tell anyone this, because where I live only the United States military is important.  They are omni-important, because their dollars support most of the community of Fayetteville.  Fayettevillians have been thriving from spent military dollars since the inception of Fort Bragg.  If those military dollars evaporate into the midst of Desert Storm, many businesses will fail.  It is a bit of a drag that a city derives its soul from the practice of war.  When I moved to Columbus, Ohio after several years I realized the difference.  In Columbus there was no war!  There was no mention of war or impending war.  The city functioned well with no military activity whatsoever.  It was glorious.  Instead art was prevalent.  Don't get me wrong.  There is art in Fayettenam.  There is a die hard artistic community which thrives despite Fort Bragg.  Perhaps others more easily can ignore the ramifications of the practice of war.  I cannot.  I, in my personal consciousness, do not want to entertain the thought of war at any time, and yet I do.  I dream lucid dreams of living during war.  I wake to scenarios having to save myself from demise of all kinds.  I solve complex situations living during war perhaps purely as visceral stimulation to my intellect-starved brain.  Certainly television offers no visionary or artistic content.  "Fosse" is an abnormality, or we have the wrong service provider.  Perhaps "On Demand" or streaming is the wave of the future for the viewing of content.  Both my mother and I are from the old school.  We don't want to spend time programming our own prime time line up, not that we watch television during prime time anyway.  I don't.  Why would I?  I used to enjoy late night television until its content evaporated.  When Letterman, Craig Ferguson and Kilborn disappeared from late night TV, its fate was sealed.  Now we have nothing more than insulting, insipid, insidious uncle Tomming.  The changes in American culture are stark, drastic, and real.  We have regressed as a nation in every way possible.  We have become a culture of trash, white trash, trailer trash, and LGBT trash.  We seek nothing other than to satisfy our own selfish desires mistakenly represented as progress.  "Uh, I look in the mirror, and I don't know what sex I am."  How is your day going to end up?  With the myriad of problems facing humanity, this is one of them.  I have to reinforce my innate sexuality rather than having it reciprocated in society.  How is it that God's plan, God's creations have been so drastically altered?  We, mere humans, feel we have the knowledge and power to act as our on God?  It is a shite state of affairs.  I don't want ever to think about war, and yet I am prepared.  Subconsciously my brain receives stimulation from the military industrial complex, and instead of creating art I try to figure out how to survive in war torn America.  It is coming. 

The Government Which Kills Its People

As I sit in my bedroom I cannot enjoy music.  There is too much diesel knock.  My left ear is ringing from tinnitus, incidentally which is caused by low frequency sound waves.  This occurs only if you all ready have hearing loss in your ears.  For whatever reason the lost frequencies "ring" with the sound of tinnitus.  No one wants you to know that, especially GE.  Most low frequency pollution is caused by transportation of people and freight.  Planes and trains.  Not only do my ears ring from this pollution, I have diesel knock in the air in my room.  I can hear the sound of the diesel engine with my ears.  I can feel its vibration on my skin.  Consequently we are going to spend two thousand dollars insulating the upstairs of our house for low frequency noise.  The common wall for both upstairs bedrooms also is a wall for our garage attic which is untreated.  There is a huge open cavity, the attic, which has no insulation.  It is a garage.  It is hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  That air abuts this common wall of both upstairs bedrooms which for the most part is untreated.  It partially is treated with rock wool and blackboard from l962.  That is all, and it is very ineffective for insulating these bedrooms for temperature and low frequency vibration from diesel trains and military aircraft.  We are going to spend two thousand dollars to treat it.  This is after having siding and double pane windows installed.  It will make a difference.  My father, before he died, used to say, "I don't want to go into that room.  I may be dead in the morning."  It didn't used to be a problem, before AC Traction widely was implemented both by CSX-T and now Norfolk Southern.  N/S refused to buy AC locomotives at first.  Now as their fleet ages they are rebuilding their C40-9W's with alternating current traction motors.  Consequently large invasive inverters are installed and a milieu of electrical processing in an auxiliary cab.  Mobile AC generators capable of producing 4,400 horsepower per locomotive.  They are ambulant.  Constantly they move under the cloak of anonymity through our communities, our hillsides, and our cities.  They are omnipresent, and yet they are unregulated just like our airlines.  The FAA and the FRA have a cozy relationship with the industries they are meant to govern.  Hence not much regulation occurs.  Instead a lot of bribes are offered in the way of lobbying.  Gifts.  The American people suffer.  The demise of the United States is occurring at the behest of Washington, and they do not care.  They are not concerned with their reckoning in the afterlife.  Only they are concerned with their wealth now.  Trump.  These are the evils against which Jesus preached.  It would be a shame to see the world end in our lifetimes, but no one seems to care in Washington.  Scores of Trump operatives have been discovered, indicted, tried, and convicted, and the Mueller Report is a hoax.  I can't listen to it anymore, a pathological liar who is our president.  Nancy Pelosi won't impeach.  Two more years of decline and eventual anarchy we have to which to look forward.  We are spending two thousand dollars insulating our upstairs, so that the unregulated rail freight industry serving America's military industrial complex will decrease its presence in our lives.  It is a token.  Even with this treatment the amount of electricity in our environment is toxic.  Our batteries inexplicably run down.  The power grid is tamped down, and our lights are dim.  Our WiFi network drops out, and often there is a standing wave in our home.  I can't tell if it is acoustic or electromagnetic, because sound and electricity behave in similar ways.  Since the Marines came to Fort Bragg to practice heavy artillery an omnipresent low frequency wave has been in our home.  It is variable and responds to sound.  If I raise my voice, yell at it, strike an enlightening thought or emotion, or anything else that should be private it responds by changing its frequency.  A few years Amanda Dolasinsky wrote in article in the Fayetteville Observer about the Army's new targeting system.  It is a mobile radar system which helps gunners target their shells.  Specifically she wrote that after the round is fired the system emits sound waves.  She wrote "sound waves," not electromagnetic waves.  Radar is a standing electromagnetic wave.  When I e-mailed her and asked her if this was a mistake, she didn't respond.  We can assume she was accurate, and that our defense industry is using dangerous infrasound in its products.  The companies that built America like GE and the companies which are supposed to protect us instead are lowering our quality of life.  I would go as far as to say they are killing us.  I have friends that agree the food industry slowly has been killing us as well.  Who is responsible for discovering and prosecuting this activity?