The Once Beautiful Music of America

As I sit in my bedroom and listen to my own rendition of Henry Mancini's "Moon River," it dawned on me that not everyone may understand my beef with the railroads and the military industrial complex.  It is more probable that most people think I am a fanatic, an extremist, or more threateningly a socialist.  To rail against the military in a military town is unpopular.  To chastise an incumbent industry upon which the military relies also is risky.  I am surrounded by young, fit, exuberant fighting men.  To criticize their sustenance is picking a fight, and to criticize the "Iron Horse," that which built America, also could be considered  unpatriotic.  It also should be remembered that while the railroads did traverse our continent and pave the way to the west, they also took prisoners.  Any settlers that were in their way, by the use of Eminent Domain, were misplaced and lost their homesteads to the railroad's right of way.  Railroads became monopolies and eventually trusts which maintained lopsided power over American citizens.  Not much has changed.  Because the railroads built America there is not much place that is not replete with long existing trackage.  It is everywhere, in our towns, in our cities, and in our own backyards.  The railroads have made a resurgence in recent years and now have forged their way into the Fortune 500.  Warren Buffet owns the Burlington Northern Santa Fe in its entirety.  That should tell you something.  Every American knows that we are living in a time unlike ever before.  We are on unfamiliar ground and it is shaky.  Major aberrations have transpired in financial America which have put the nation at risk.  A newly elected President Trump has not helped.  Instead he rewarded corporate America with a twelve percent tax cut which unbeknownst to most tricked back to the middle class.  The rich continue to reap massive rewards for duping the American public.  The media has not helped.  Whenever God was removed from American consciousness and legislation was repealed which forced the media to present both sides of an issue, the stage was set for massive corruption.  The Huffington Post calls it the rise of white collar crime, again.  I could care less about Precision Railroading.  What I do care about is the infringement of my right to peace and well being.  These rights are blanketed under our federal government's Environmental Protection Agency, and it has taken a full frontal assault.  During the Trump presidency everything in place in America which protects citizens from unfair exploitation and abuse has been purposely dismantled.  Our environment, our natural resources, our civil rights, and our opportunities have been seriously neutered at the behest of Donald Trump and his administration.  It is undeniable.  It should be of no surprise that when he was inaugurated things instantly got worse for American civil rights.  Trump began a race war and reignited segregative sentiments which have torn the country apart.  Ranting about environmental pollution and noise would seem a pebble in a fast rushing stream of ensuing governmental corruption.  Scott Pruitt, a man who sued the EPA fourteen times on behalf of the fossil fuel industry, was tapped by Donald Trump to be its administrator.  In like fashion our current president has attempted to dismantle just about every American policy ever enacted for the good and protection of average working class people.  It has been a bold agenda, and not unlike Adolph Hitlers Nazi propaganda seduced and hooked many Americans.  Only when you are on a train headed for Auschwitz will you realize truly you have been railroaded.  Railroaded we have become.  When I criticize rail traffic the most common response I receive is how most folks wax philosophic about the wail of the distant train whistle.  A whole genre of popular music was created by the influence of the rhythmic undulation of chugging steam locomotives.  Certainly it has a place in America's heart and culture, but things have changed.  No longer do we live in a care free time when hobos traveled the rails living the vagabond life.  Railroading, more specifically "Precision Railroading," has penetrated America.  Our spaghetti bowl, a mish mash of meandering trackage, has become the target of high dollar exploitation.  European models of super efficient and quick rail transportation have put undo pressure on an antiquated and unstable network of trackage in America.  All ready we have seen the dire consequences of its exploitation.  Amtrack casualties have risen dramatically.  People are dying as a result of riding Amtrack passenger trains.  This is because what once was a federally funded company has become a for profit privately run business, and they share their corridors with major freight railroads.  Precision Railroading has created massive delays in Amtrack service, because shareholder dollars take precedence.  Amtrack passengers are left waiting on sidings until big business gets its nut.  This could be a metaphor for today's America.  Average citizens, the little guys, no longer are America's priority.  Since Donald Trump became president America has become a rich man's club.  In very deliberate, covert, and sinister methodology Americans are being ethnically cleanses.  If it is by the food industry and unhealthy and mislabeled groceries, with polluted drinking water, or coercive misleading healthcare Americans are being poisoned rather than healed.  Healing has become a favorite and lucrative business for the wealthy.  With all of this squarely in our faces I as a musician shout most loudly about one thing.  When I am listening to Henry Mancini's "Moon River" in the privacy of my own home, I am reflecting on the ridiculousness, absurdity, and unconstitutionality of how my musical craft is made more difficult.  It is simple.  Our home is full of invisible pollution.  We have done all that we can do to suppress ambient noise, but when I try to create music it is startling and infuriating to the degree that sound is mangled.  Rarely do I ever hear a pure, pristine, and beautiful sound no matter how skilled the source.  Instead I hear an undulating, modulated, demonic wash of sound that bears little resemblance to its true nature.  I have been trying to voice and tune several Fender Rhodes electric pianos, keyboard instruments which derive their sound from electromechanical means, and their tone generator, vibrating metal amplified by magnetic pick ups is raped and pillaged by aberrant, airborne, electrical and acoustic energy in the infrasonic range.  It is non stop.  Not only does electricity arc through the air, sound continuously moves from the modulation of this energy.  The Environmental Protection Agency was created to protect Americans from hazardous pollution of all kinds, but President Bill Clinton saw fit to ignore the long standing recommendations of the FCC and auction off unused microwave frequencies to telecommunication companies which have become the new American economy.  With microwave transmitters on every corner, the need for a portable entertainment device seems to outweigh the dire crisis of the excessive heating of our environment.  Does no one really put two and two together?  Microwaves produce heat and manufactured heat is killing the earth.  I struggle to produce beautiful, meaningful, and sonorous music, and yet I do it in spite of the military industrial complex and its supporting industries.  There are those who believe in and support a war economy.  Bombs bursting in air and the red glare of rockets are patriotic to some degree, but war is not the answer.  Any economy that is based on war and the probability of war will fail as man has proven time and time again.  Will we destroy ourselves in great and loud revelry, a bacchanal of military might, or will we find peace, joy, and serenity in the beautiful music of America?