The White House

While America is accosted with "White" lies, perceptions of White Nationalist sentiments by affluent, mostly Republican, Trump demagogues, America once again has become divided.  I don't remember this divide during the Clinton administration, because Multiculturalism was a strong ethos in their platform.  "It Takes a Village" is a far cry from the divisiveness of the Trump Clan's KKK propaganda.  Donning white hoods, spewing racist rhetoric, and further inciting blind allegiance may have worked in fledgling America, but we have evolved.   We are lucky to have MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Nicole Wallace, and Joy Reid to sort through the muck.  There is so much of it, mostly lies.  They fact check Trump's lie tongue and cheek, because to synthesize it at face value is almost fatal.  The depth, darkness, and debility of our President's vitriol is profound.  It attempts to paralyze my spirit, and consequently it takes active denial to neutralize its false message.  In a nutshell to recount the Republican National "Convention," one must understand that it was not a convention at all.  Startlingly it was a glimpse into the real Trump reality.  While in the presidency for almost a full term, a curtain has been drawn closed surrounding the Trump base.  White supremacist militia members have emerged only at the behest of the president.  Did a seventeen year old Illinois extremists suddenly decide to travel across state lines to defend personal property and lives in the midst of "Black Lives Matter" protests?  Was Kyle Rittenhouse summoned to make this trek and murder two Americans.  How is he different than Dylan Roof, James Holmes, Eric Harris, or Dylan Klebold except that his opportunity was more mainstream.  He choose a volatile, public, civil dispute as a place to interject his opinion.  What did he think he was doing other than playing G.I. Joe?  President Trump effectively is manipulating his base like a competent cult leader.  In the greatest stealth he provokes altercation and seduces those who know no better.  One would think affluent, upper class, business owners would know better.  They know not to kill innocent people in public.  Their murder is clandestine intentional or not.  It unfolds in people's lives behind the scenes in intimate ways which defy public understanding.  Addiction.  Contamination.  Gluttony.  Traps are set and their patrons retreat to have revenue collected by lackeys.  Never must they confront the horror of their wealth.  They are immune from these ills, sheltered in place in their gated communities in Houston, at their country clubs, and at illegal political rallies in the "People's House."  Most insultingly what did President Trump call this house with a smirk on his face leaning on one elbow like he was having sex?   The answer was the White House, because he feels it is for whites.  I can think of no other more profound abdication, insulting of America, and personal cry for help than these words.  It would seem he wants to be put out of his misery as a martyr for evil.   

Southern Ruination

I have been rambling on to my mother about why I left Columbia, South Carolina around 1990.  She turns a deaf ear after trying to listen.  Verbalizing my actions back then helps me understand.  It was a complex and difficult time.  The easy part was understanding my own situation.  I lost a job, and badly I failed to end a relationship by doing what many people do.  I let it ramble not willing to make the decision.  In this situation always it will end badly, but it not always is easy to understand.  It ebbed and flowed, but ultimately it did not return because of distance.  With no protocol for long distance love, it has little chance.  I let it tarry, and it rode in a different direction.  It took long enough to recover from that mistake and regroup for another career direction.  Those were the easy parts.  The difficult part became understanding thirty years later the real reason I left Columbia, South Carolina.  It was political corruption.  The State House in this capital city was the target of an FBI sting which exposed bribery.  Many elected state officials were offered and accepted cash bribes. They were captured on video tape.  As it turns out it was a much bigger deal for me and my conscience.  After watching Nikki Haley speak for the Republican National Party promoting the reelection of President Donald Trump, immediately I knew why I left Columbia.  While Ms. Haley had some moving talking points, and I don't think she is an evil person, it was clear to me she represents the kind of politician from which America has suffered the most.  She is an opportunist.  She may have grass roots, but her motivation is advancement in her career through the procurement of power.  She has suffered from what the rest of the Republican congress has suffered.  She has become brain washed from lobby money.  It was not until I returned to Columbia several years ago, that I realized why I had left.  Columbia was exactly the same.  Nothing had changed.  There was no apparent urban growth.  Things were  cemented in place including their politics.  This is the reason I left.  Driving back into this favorable city thirty years ago in which I enjoyed living, studying, and working for five years, Never did I notice it was white.  I noticed this time, because I have been gone working all over the world.  Columbia reveled in its whiteness.  It is sheltered and immune from the realities of color.  The politics of Columbia only recently became clear to me with the reelection campaign of Donald Trump.  It turns out where I am living is Trump land.  I never knew this before, and it explains my revulsion to this political perspective.  When we played jazz, or rather tried to play jazz in Columbia's notable country clubs, they were not happy.  Often bands were booked on causal engagements with nothing but a jazz repertoire.  These country clubbers preferred "shag" music, music to which they could shag dance.  We had no vocalist, and while I knew many shag songs the small jazz combos did not.  They also had no desire to play this music.  We were confronted by angry patrons unhappy with our musical selections.  These people are Trump supporters.  It has not changed.  They are the affluent, upper class, Southern society which always have existed in here.  Had Abraham Lincoln not ended slavery, I am sure these people would have owned slaves.  They do not understand the fortunes they have, such as the rice industry in Charleson, were built with African American slaves.  They did not toil for their money.  They relegated authority with the aid of an inhumane, unethical, immoral, and now criminal practice slavery.  There is a stark spiritual difference between me these people.  There is something so deep and so strong, that when I am around it I feel physically ill.  This is the way I have felt the last few days.  It is because these are the people involved in the Republican National Convention.  Never have I seen with my own eyes such a distorted, untruthful, and inept depiction of American political life.  Like Donald Jr. is saying, they are going to lose, and they are going to lose huge.  He is afraid Joe Biden will lynch the survivors.  I remain skeptical about the November election, because the Republican Party was able to bribe the electoral college in 2016.  Since several things have transpired.  One is the Republican Party now adopts no platform.  Their platform is, "Whatever the President wants."  They have not taken the time to formulate their ideas of American leadership or policy.  This is how lethargic and  inept the United States Congress has become.  Money has turned them into vampires.  While I do not believe in such figments of the imagination, this the perfect metaphor for them.  Perhaps that is the purpose of such literary imagery.  I never have seen it with my own eyes in the mainstream American media.  While televangelists were close, they only were two bit hack snake oil salesmen.  They scorned God and sealed their own fate with their scams, but none of them was the leader of the free world.  Watching the Republican National Convention I feel as if I am watching televangelism in its hey day.  This is the Trump Clan approach, and it is the first time America is seeing their true colors.  It is an anachronism in the greatest sense.  It is like seeing KKK hoods in the 21st century.  The depression it creates in my soul is staggering.  I am experiencing the death and destruction of America's Civil War now,  today.  Our country never has changed.  Only has it beaten back the evil beast by sheer determination, Christianity, and desperation.  With the able miseducation of the millennial generation and their contemptuous exploitation, this surviving faction of the American South, those who live in Columbia, South Carolina and elsewhere have won the presidency again and almost ruined this country. Truly it is a dark time when you democracy hangs in the balance.  Will it be God or a dead black man which tips the scales? 

The Fungal Tonque of the devil

I have a large palate.  I am lucky to have such a thing, because life constantly is slinging bullshit at you.  I was spared this B.S. while I was cruising.  Maybe this is why I went, because life in America "Ain't What is Used to Be."  "Things Ain't What They Used to Be," sang Count Basie.  Count Basie is an American figure worth remembering.  I can't think of one American figure in the last two decades I want to remember.  Jeff Bezos may be the richest man on earth, and I like Amazon.  They try to coerce you on their website showing only the highest prices, but you can get most anything you want or need via the internet.  This is a great convenience, and it drastically has changed the American economy.  America has forgotten what business is, business which supports and employs those other than its owners.  The encompassing nature of business, not business that moves money around on Wall Street, has been forgotten in America.  The examples we have are Walmart, a company that underpays it employees, so they must collect food stamps.  A representative example of a successful American business is any movie studio in Hollywood during the age of film.  One comparison to today's process for movies, and you will understand what a successful business is.  It is not just an entity which makes money for its private owners, which is what Republicans and Trump supporters think.  For some reason this faction of America feels they owe no debt to the nation in which they live and have made their fortunes.  Inexplicably they feel they must offer no ante to the pot.  They rise from the ashes of those they have burned and offer no token.  America will not and cannot function this way.  While limited government is a valid concept, America has grown away from such an idea.  The reality is the government funds must everyone, and that of itself is a socialist concept.  Often those shouting, "Socialist!" are those taking this money.  It was summarized well on MSNBC the other night, when they said Republicans are folks who have good jobs, live in their little bubble, and condemn those less fortunate.  Someone has to pay the piper.  Someone has to pay Uncle Sam for the freedom America offers.  It is not possible for this fee to come from the embattled middle class or the poor.  It must come from the wealthy, and before Ronald Reagan it did.  Before Ronnie became president the tax on the rich was 70%.  The wealthy forfeited this percentage of their income to Washington.  Now the wealthy including Amazon and Apple pay very little.  Corrupt Washingtonians continue to steal from the only people available, the American people.  They do it through their elected offices in the biggest con on earth.  It is not new, but at least in the past they tried to conceal their intentions.  America will not recover until the example of business which benefits everyone is revived.  That means money must flow from Cayman and Swiss bank accounts into the hands of ordinary everyday workers.  The middle class, newly empowered with value, income, and incentive is upon which America relies when she is functioning.  A movie studio which employs thousands of artists, craftsmen, and workers of all types, promotes a common goal, creates an able commodity, and makes a profit is a wonderful example of a successful American business.  We need more businesses like this, and less like Walmart as economical as it is.  We all adore Walmart, and it does provide a valuable service to America, but businesses which treat employees with respect and dignity and pay them a living wage are better.  Slinging hash, pumping gas, and stocking merchandise are not pinnacles of American capitalism.  America has become soiled with the feces of corrupt lawmakers.  Each day we rise we are surrounded by the stench of evil and corruption, and each day I am becoming more cognizant of what is require to survive.  Truly it has become a fight of existence, not art.  Working in the cruise industry I lived a life that was not real.  I was taught the customer comes first, and you must above all else be friendly to them.  You must be a nice guy, and most of my life I have been.  When I moved to Cowtown, I stayed a nice guy but I had nothing better to do then excel in the field of music.  I tried to be the best I could be, and I had good examples against which to try.  It is easier when you have this example.  Today the examples before us are so twisted, demonic, and unfathomable it is difficult to decide what to do or how to be.  We are the products of authoritarianism, a government predicating our lives without thinking or caring about us.  It is fair time to understand that this rule must be eliminated with force if necessary.  God says, "The meek shall inherit the earth," but with no earth upon which to live we have no choice but to put evil at bay.  We may not be able to defeat it, but we can put it in its place. 

Ridin' with Biden

Now that the Democratic "Convention" is over, things are coming into my mind that need to be addressed.  The common theme or the one point of activism has been "Black Lives Matter."  This is not the only talking point in American politics.  Certainly it and the Covid 19 outbreak are relevant.  Corruption in America's police force is nothing new, but the senseless murdering of black men is an atrocity which needs to be addressed.  It is not the only dire issue of our time.  One only needs to think back a few years, and easily another seemingly forgotten issue may be more dire.  I did not hear it mentioned at the Democratic Convention.  Our memories today are short.  The issue of mass shootings in America, a phenomenon unique only to our great country, should be more pressing.  What could cause American youth to arm themselves and commit genocide against their own citizens?  Is it they do not like America?  Is it they are mentally ill?  Have they been brainwashed?  Are they victims of cultists?  Are they domestic terrorists?  A racist and murderous police force is dire, but our children killing senselessly may be more dire.  It is more dire, because we do not know why.  We do not know why American youth are so deranged that they need to kill innocent Americans and often themselves.  While this issue may pale in comparison to a worldwide pandemic that has killed thousands, in my mind it is the most important issue of American life.  How can we continue to live in a nation which fosters such unexplained violence?  In all likelihood drugs may be a part.  America always has had a drug problem, and this issue also was not present at the Democratic Convention.  It would seem our generation in all of its naivete seems to think we are the only people who have lived on this earth.  The problems which have beset man from his inception still are the same, which Covid 19 has proven.  If we are to perish on this earth it will be from issues related to extreme heat and humidity.  Not unlike a Stephen King novel, an awful green fungus may proliferate and envelope the world.  It all ready has begun.  Every article I read in Wikipedia on medication begins with fungal infection are on the rise and are becoming immune to traditional medications.  I don't think this is true.  I think pharmaceutical companies are weakening their medicines on purpose.  Herbal supplements not regulated by any agency can well you baking soda in a capsule and call it anything they want.  Believe me they do.  Cannabis oil often is nothing more than a fake.  Getting to the root of mental illness in America should be the focus of our time.  Our media is so selective upon which the things it reports.  Mysteriously global terrorism, ISIS, Afghanistan, Iraq, and all have taken a backseat to plague.  It would be wise to keep a keen eye on what is happening in the Middle East and with the United States military.  If Donald Trump is capable of stealing from everyone, he is capable as the Commander and Chief to direct our armed forces into the wrong task.  We have no idea what they are doing with an 800 billion dollar budget.  I would like to know.  It would seem we are shit on our own in America, but Biden is trying to change that. 

America's Exorcism

American popular music used to be a big thing.  American popular music at one time made more money than Hollywood movies.  At one time American music performers were the conscience of popular culture.  It is plausible also they influenced mainstream thought, habits, and consciousness.  American Rock 'n' Roll, of which I missed, apparently was the soul of America.  It was not just the music for young people, it became the heartbeat of America.  We know so little about our own gifts.  2020 perhaps is the most shallow and ignorant generation of all time, but we have had a lot with which to contend.  2020 aside modern cultural ignorance has been in the making since the turn of the century.  I feel 2000 was the turning point.  Shit took a hike at the turn of the century.  Watch a movie made before 2000 and most likely you will see a story and filming of substance.  It will engage you, and often it will enhance your perspective.  2000 was like a lightswitch that got flipped off.  No matter how much I ignore it the issue of "pop" keeps rearing its ugly head.  It is huge.  As I was watching Austin City Limits last night, the label for the band was Texas soul.  Okay.  I understand that.  Then I listened to the bass player.  The sole defining aspect of this Texas soul was what the bass player played, and it was not soul.  It was "pop."  I have defined "pop" before, and I will define it again.  It is not just a shortened version of the word popular.  A more accurate definition would "poppy."  Fluffy.  Fluff.  Onomatopoeia is a good way to define "pop."  Puff.  Pop.  It is fluffy and undefined.  It weakly blows in your ear.  When I first discovered this style of music while working on cruise ships, I discovered that the bass is the major defining element of "pop" music.  It is the rhythmic placement of the bass notes and what comes in between the major pulses or quarter notes.  In essence one can play the "pop" style without having to feel time.  What!  There you have it.  You could play music without having to feel or count the time in your mind, heart, or soul.  There it is.  It is a shortcut or a cheap way of performing what should be authentic music.  If you don't have to internalize a tempo or a feel or groove, then you are not a musician.  You are a hack.  Pop musicians, but not all of them, adhere to this principle.  You can get drunk, get high, and fuck off on stage and make your fingers move in a particular way you have learned by rote.  It is nothing.  I was not particularly waiting to feel any Texas soul, but it was not possible because the bassist was playing the "pop" pattern.  It is a pattern that mimics the strumming of the guitar.  At some point in American popular music, all testicles were castrated, masculinity was discarded, and music was transformed into an insipid, tepid, worthless milieu.  It has been for the last twenty years.  As such the experience, education, and training needed to play popular music with integrity has been forfeited.  Welcome to 2020, the year of....  The year of?  The year the American president lies to the public every time he opens his mouth.  It is the year of fraud.  It is the year of mockery.  It is the year that God no longer can stand what is happening on earth.  The most disconcerting thing is "pop" musicians are like corrupt politicians.  They also will lie to your face.  They will disparage you.  They will build themselves up.  They will slander real music with nary a care in the world.  "Pop" musicians I feel may be the biggest threat on the planet, because they can be in a position to effect societal perception.  I quit complaining about "pop," but it keeps rearing its ugly head.  Jazz 24, the streaming internet radio station, plays quality music, but a good deal of it really is pop jazz.  It, like any music, can be retooled to exist in a "pop" format.  When this happens, the original feel of the music is lost.  The feeling of the music is absent and also impossible, because this simplistic pattern a bassist plays is not capable of producing a rhythmic feel.  It is a string of puffy, square, quantized notes devoid of any human emotion.  It takes no emotion, soul, or energy to create such a line, and that is why they play it.  It is easy.  It is a deception.  I would characterize all music as "soul" music.  Who would want to listen to or experience any kind of music without soul?  It would be called noise, and this is to what we listen most of the time.  It is all over television.  It is in our stores while we shop.  It is everywhere, because businessmen discovered that this worthless concoction of noise makes people buy.  It is so disconcerting and aggravating, people buy things to appease their ill feelings.  What a tool.  The only reason I can assume musicians would adopt such a practice, is because we as Americans have forgotten what real life experience is and feels like.  It is called education.  Education is learning from one's experiences.  You have to experience something to learn from it.  For example I read two wrong wiring schematics on the interent for the Leslie 122 amplifier, and consequently installed a resistor in the wrong circuit.  It blew my fuse and otherwise caused mayhem in my life, but it also was the catalyst for better things such as addressing the real issue that was affecting my Hammond organ.  Without the process of having installed this part and it blowing the fuse, I would not have discovered the real problematic issue.  It takes time for the realization to become known.  You have to be bold enough to make the mistakes, because, "Evil proliferates when good men do nothing."  Instinctively I knew installing this resistor was going to cause a problem, but it also opened an avenue for a better outcome.  I can't watch any band on television these days. First the "musicians" are not playing anything.  They fake it with prerecorded tracks.  Tracks are the basis of the product.  No one seems to mind.  Often times it is one rapper cavorting about to a track.  This is not music.  Jimi Hendrix is music.  John Coltrane is music.  Amy Winehouse was music.  America in my estimation is tired of the fraud.  We are tired of the Donald Trump charade.  America, if she is to sustain, must spew this filth from her mouth and anus.  Those who choose not to participate in this exorcism are no better. 

The American Reckoning

I guess I am just cranky, because I am under surveillance.  My left ear tells me when the plane is near.  They fly in circles around my house.  Sometimes when I go outside at night to turn off the water, it only takes a few seconds for a jet to appear directly over my yard.  On weekends the droning will continue, until I get out of  bed.  Then they skedaddle.  It is old news.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation has multiple shell companies to which the small planes are registered.  They fly with impunity, anytime, anywhere, a retired military pilot making extra money and staying busy.  Sierra Nevada has provided a myriad of surveillance equipment including infrared sensors.  What I know from experience is when this plane is trolling above my house, I feel pain.  Its presence causes me direct physiological pain in my body.  Often it feels exactly like torture, of which the United States military is no stranger.  All ready they possess a microwave non-lethal weapon.  The Active Denial System spews a disturbing crowd with heating electromagnetic energy.  Fully I have come to believe that Covid 19 most likely was engineered in a lab and is being disbursed in the air by aircraft.  They have been antagonizing me for several years.  What other explanation is there?  The explanation is 2012 came in 2020.  The Mayans were eight years off in their prediction that the world would come to an end in 2012.  This is my take on it.  When George W. was coerced into the White House is 2000, the downward spiral began.  At his behest and for revenge for his father, still we are in the longest war in American history.  Dick Cheney is happy.  They are in the money.  It's all about the money.  We dumbed down the American population in an event similar to the Civil War.  The pure bred, strong, and intelligent bloodlines have been killed off, and only the passive and ignorant remain.  Our system of public education purposely has been undermined educating no one.  Tuition has reached epic costs, and graduating seniors have  incurred debt before their lives really begin.  Everything for which America has worked and achieved in the name of enlightenment, happiness, and spirituality has become dark, threatening, and evil.  Turn on the television and you will see it.  The amount of money we pay for the most mediocre cable service is atrocious.  The great men of this country largely are unknown or forgotten.  Harold Rhodes, Laurens Hammond, Leo Fender, George Gershwin, John Coltrane.  The truly outstanding innovative and artistic creations of the twentieth century have been deemed of no value.  Instead Apple, Google, and Amazon have enriched their own assets by claiming the rights to these achievements.  Creators, artists, and producers no longer wield any economic power.  It belongs to the distributors, because the millennial generation is too lazy to put down their iPhones.  It took the act of murder to spark action in some faction of the American public.  It is plausible our electoral college may reelect Trump, because our media is owned and controlled by those who know nothing.  We can't trust them.  In 2000 the networks declared Bush the winner before the vote was confirmed.  There is too much amiss, and I am too old and too tired to pick up an AR-15 and go after the big bad wolf.  I think about it.  I think about shooting at the plane that harasses me day in and day out.  I think about the spineless assholes that torment the good people.  We have had it easy in our lifetime.  Compared to other generations of Americans, it has been a walk in the park.  It would have been nice to have known the reckoning would come in 2020. 

The Wrong Technology

The "Age of Technology" is a misnomer in American history.  Pundits predicted that what would emerge in America over time was an "Age of Electricity."  Whether anyone want to believe it America all ready has created, utilized, and dispensed with her greatest accomplishments.  The greatest of the all has been her "Age of Technology," but this is not now.  It may be difficult to believe in an era of the iPhone, apps which can lock your doors, pay for your purchases, and monitor your homes, the iPhone in no way rivals America's true "Age of Technology."  Without such a device, a miniature personal computer with a state of the art camera and a mobile phone, America sent men to the moon.  The Japanese created cutting edge electronic components.  The Germans produced the most finely engineered and tooled products.  It all has been done before, and it has been done better.  The only thing that is different is that kind of quality takes money.  America has decided these products are not worth it.  Quality costs too much.  We would rather pay peasants a fraction of an American living wage to produce shit, instead of spending the time and resources investing in our own people.  We sold out the American people, and it was called Globalization.  I can think of no product today that comes close to the quality of most things produced in the past.  The best example would be voting machines.  When things required real raw materials, quality craftsmenship, and a skilled and literate work force, you could be assured that the product would work, and it would work well.  It would work for a long period of time.  With the shift from real materials, textiles, furniture, produce, and appliances to the iPhone, things got smaller, more fragile, and less dependable.  Even software was better in its inception.  Today products are diluted, undefined, poorly implemented trinkets of fodder.  They are over priced, they under perform, and they are no reliable.  Will you trust America's voting system on Nov. 3?  We don't even know what it is.  When ATM's first emerged Diebold manufactured a simple and robust machine which efficiently handled mobile banking needs.  Over the years ATM's only have gotten worse in design.  They are not as good as they were in the beginning.  With the iPhone vying for control of everything, we are seeing constant and continual failures of traditional processes which now are reliant upon poorly written computer code.  They are fads.  They are click bait.  They are pop culture, but the iPhone does not deserve a place in the the maintaining of America.  It has no place in the formal processes of governance, education, or justice.  The iPhone is an entertainment device, and this is for what is should be purposed.  America at this moment has no clue how our states will handle the November 3rd election.  Each states is different.  Each states has different processes.  Each state above all suffers from a different level of corruption and bias toward a particular political candidate.  I have just finished watching the HBO film "Recount."  It is telling.  I feel no comfort that our election process is secure.  I feel it at no other time has been less secure, less competent, and more prone to failure than now.  It is because of this "Age of Technology."  When we fail to invest in quality tools, quality products, and quality innovation which are designed for success over the long haul, we will reap the reward.  That reward is failure for America.  America has been lured into the internet, and have have become addicted.  The last place any type of election should exist is on the internet.  No part of the election process should be invested in the internet.  Elections are old school, and unlike what happened in Florida in 2000 all votes must be collected and counted.  The disparities, the irregularities, the loop holes, and suppression have to be recognized and addressed before November.  It nearly is impossible, because those running the system are not transparent.  Bush won Florida because of a token rich Secretary of State who chose to favor him.  Bush also won Florida because his influential family had enough power 
to intimidate the Supreme Court.  Influence from monetary wealth is what rules America.  Our process is pure, but its vulnerability to power is deadly.  The rich are in a position to administer American policies.  It clearly was seen in this film "Recount."  The processes of the American legal system were impressive, but they were controlled by money.  Each time a victory was had, another rung had to be climbed acknowledging yet another richer person or group.  The rich are the rulers not because of their wisdom, ethics, or spirit, because they only know how to win.  They do not know for what they are fighting.  Hell must be an appealing place. 

The Failed Trump Misalignment

America has succumbed to an all new low.  Former President Obama in jest mustered the slang "knee cap" to describe Trump's covert actions to undermine the United States Postal Service.  It is nothing new.  It is the protocol of his presidency.  It is what his peeps do, the Trump Clan.  When no longer can you steal from private markets, you get elected president by bribing the electoral college and steal from America.  It is not unprecedented, although it seems new to America.  Corruption in Washington always has existed, but until now it was not enacted with malice, antagonism, and enjoyment.  This form of corruption, gleefully appointing adversaries to cabinet positions, so they can dismantle an agency from the inside seems particularly cold.  It seems like Vladimir Putin.  There was Benedict Arnold number one Scott Pruitt.  In his short tenure he did irreparable harm to our Environmental Protection Agency.  Previously the Office of Noise Abatement was dismantled allowing noise pollution to proliferate in both rural and urban North America.  Now there is Benedict Arnold Sr., Bill Barr who gleefully smirks while enacting the president's often unlawful and unconstitutional policies.  There is the entire peanut gallery of white, dough boy, spineless Klan members, who don't seem to understand when they are ousted from public office by the voters they will be living in the same country just like Trump.  The popular and wise adage always has been, "Don't shit where you sleep (or eat)."  Trump has shit all over America, so he will be living elsewhere, when he is removed from office on Tuesday November the third.  Louis Dejoy may not understand that living in G-bury once may have been an asset to his political career, but when you  sacrifice your own flock for you own personal gain like his countless predecessors in the American south (Pat McCrory, subliminal messaging) you will be living in the midst of your enemies at your on behest.  Apparently evil has begun to believe that American people have become too ignorant to take politics seriously, as Germans did the Nazi party.  When you have a global pandemic killings hundreds of thousands of people, millions of jobs are disintegrating, and authoritarian oppression is suffocating American freedom the flock will not look the other way into their iPhone screen.  There will be nothing there to save them.  Salvation only will come in the form of the November vote where the masses will rally, present themselves forcibly, and demand Donald J. Trump be relieved of the American Presidency.  The fate of the world is at stake. 

El Banjo, Not El Bano.

Bored again.  A particular Hammond organ parts store on the internet sent me the wrong resistors for my Leslie 122 amp.  Needless to say after I spent the time soldering them in, the fuse blew, and that was it.  No more Leslie 122, at least for the moment.  The most logical train of thought is to think you did something wrong.  Is a resistor polarized?  I tried it the opposite way, and nothing happened.  Turns out the parts guy mistook 470 ohms for 470K ohms.  Not the same thing, so they are sending the correct resistors.  I hope no damage was done to my amplifier, seeing as there really was nothing wrong with it to begin with.  I reckon it will at least get it back up and running.  Frustrating.  I can't play my organ, one of them anyway, the one that uses the Leslie 142.  This is my prized instrument, one I have spent a fair amount of time working on.  It's all cool.  It will work out, but I must be patient.  LeJoy, the Trump appointed Postmaster General, is slowing down the mail on purpose.  My solder pump came to Fayetteville, went to G-bury, and came back again.  It should have been delivered days ago.  DeJoy.  Not, "Oh, Joy."  Another Trump crony making things worse for all Americans.  It commonly is stated that jazz came from ragtime.  Most American only know Scott Joplin.  I'm one of them.  If W.C. Handy is the self proclaimed "Father of the Blues," then Scott Joplin would be the "Father of Ragtime."  It is easiest.  If Maple Leaf Rag was published in 1897, then isn't is easiest to say that is when it began?  I disagree.  I disagree the same way America says Bill Monroe invented Bluegrass.  He didn't.  He may have been crucial in its development over recent years, but he alone did not create Bluegrass the genre.  More accurately the traditionally known instrumentation of Bluegrass, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and double bass was codified in Bill Monroe's bands.  He also sang in this really high, piercing, nasal voice.  Earl Scruggs banjo picking style also was an important part of this sound, but they decided to leave the Monroe band and embark on their own music tour.  As for the banjo, an African instrument that was brought to America by the slaves, it was influenced by the lute.  They had lutes in Africa.  The most notable thing about the banjo is other than it being a drum on a stick is it has a drone string.  This string is on the top of the neck, and it is higher in pitch than the other played strings.  If one uses the thumb and two fingers pick style, the thumb is what is responsible for plucking this higher pitched drone string.  I didn't know this.  It sounds like another player, and thus the incredible power of the sound of the banjo.  When one hears this picking style on the banjo, easily it is able to understand its influence in ragtime music played on the piano.  It is the same thing, arpeggiated figures of a major chord surrounding a melody to embellish it.  Cool.  Ragtime comes from slaves playing popular tunes of the day from their Scot Irish plantation masters on fiddle and banjo.  I am guessing this is whence swing came.  African polyrhythm from tribal drumming could be a factor, but that was a continent away.  I guess I am going to have to get me a banjo. 
 

America's Popular Music

The majority of my life has been pursuing music.  I have done the requisite study in academia reaching several pinnacles.  With each success comes a predecessorial period of confusion, insecurity, and inactivity.  When purposely you forget what you have learned and begin anew amassing further extending knowledge, always there is a period of "lame duck."  It's not that you can't create.  It's that you choose not to use the same vocabulary which has sufficed before.  Jazz aficionado Miles Davis is a metaphor for this process.  While we may have not seen his periods of inactivity, they were there.  It is not always to do with enlightenment.  Sometimes periods come along that divert you from your chosen path.  Sometimes these diversions are part of the plan.  Instead of becoming stymied by unfathomable unrest, it is better to shift gears and move on.  My creative output is at a low point, because readily I can't feel anything.  My personal expression is mute partly by my choice and partly because of the political and social climate in our country.  I decided that this administration does not deserve my artistry.  Frank Zappa may have had similar sentiments about his musical offerings.  The problem of parasites exists.  When you continue with your creativity driven by your intellect and spirit in the vacuum of crisis, parasites can appear.  Instead of accepting the responsibility to help as say a supporting member of a choir, they just latch on to the leader.  There is no shame in this process, but eventually it is required that able bodied participants must assume some of the responsibility.  "Live in the trenches," Al Pacino says in the film The Devil's Advocate.  Stay low profile.  Listen.  Learn.  Artists by nature have a desire to express their emotions through art.  When this is not possible, they become unhappy or depressed.  It would seem emotional fulfillment, understanding, and purging is a necessary part of the human genome.  Traditionally in American history popular music provided an outlet for this expression.  This avenue for human emotional expression served more than one purpose.  It cleanses the artists to some degree, and it unifies those with similar sentiments.  We could call this "mainstream," or in Obama's words, "Mainstreet."  Either term and what it represents it a unifying form of solidarity.  It helps a nation become and continue to be a nation.  I think we all can agree that for the United States to remain a unified nation, some form of similar sentiment must exist.  In recent years these unifying sentiments have become disguised.  In most likelihood they still exist, but racist, discriminatory, and inflammatory political rhetoric have poisoned us.  When I woke up today I asked myself what was today's "popular" music.  There is such a thing as American Popular Music.  Always it has been a tangible commodity.  The Brill Building, "Tin Pan Alley," on Manhattan Island in New York was a hub for American popular music at the beginning of the twentieth century.  Music at that time, before television and radio, was in high demand.  The huge irony here is that this music was written music.  It was published music.  Written and published music had to be bought and played by someone, so middle classed households were the key.  Those who could afford to do so would  purchase a piano for their homes, and home music making was mainstream.  A few things I have learned in my journey back into American music history is that much of the early music in America was printed.  It was composed.  There was the aural tradition, and perhaps that tradition manifested itself in folk music, a music by the "folks" for the "folks" by people who were not trained.  Education is a plural and common entity.  One can learn many things without going to school, as I am doing now.  Just because you are not formally trained in no way determines your musical ability.  This phenomenon is proven consistently in America's musical artists.  Louis Armstrong began his music making without being able to read music.  There were many others.  This of itself proves the aural tradition is strong, viable, and artistic.  It is a core component.  Many notable schooled academic music composers and scholars chose to study and document these folk musics, including Bela Bartok.  They proved that this historical, cultural, folk music was integral to the life of a nation.  Whether it is a Scot Irish jig, a German polka, or an Acadian ballad, folk music is the blood of the people.  Necessarily it should be infused into a nation's artistic output.  Many American composers did this.  The most notable would be George Gershwin, who although not the first to include African-American influences in his music, was the most visible.  Gershwin's language was sophisticated, and his harmonic vocabulary was influenced by both jazz and European classical music.  My point possibly is that early American music, for it to become "mainstream" needed national exposure and thus distribution.  Music publishing provided this tool, printing presses that produced tangible, sustainable,  paper music.  Since there was no national radio network, the music and traditions were carried by traveling minstrel shows.  Perhaps this was America's first television, but it was live.  Live performance and printed music were the norm in early America.  The invention of audio recording in the 1920's changed how music was consumed in America.  Now music could be recorded for posterity and appreciated by millions in their own homes.  With the onset of the Great Depression, the resulting "recording industry" floundered and radio took its place.  Possibly the strongest, most effective, and widely available unifying element of the twentieth century, radio put the sounds of American popular music in our homes.  The most notable and astounding aspect of American radio is that it was free to its consumers.  I'll say that again.  FREE.  Those responsible for the promulgation of radio were business men who understood how to make it work.  Radio stations were sponsored by businesses which sought to sell their products with the promotions of entertainment.  What a capable, fruitful, and lucrative arrangement.  This was an example of capitalism at its best.  Like most things it became polluted over time, and "Payola" figured out a way to infiltrate the system.  You just pay to have your music available to the masses.  When the process is larger, more diverse, and more complicated, more people could be involved and would benefit.  That is not what we have in America today.  What we have today is a corporate monopoly with a few players calling the shots and reaping the monetary benefits.  It can't be argued that the internet has become the new distributor of American Popular Music.  As such live performance and published music have waned.  They are not extinct yet.  When I woke up today, I asked myself, "What is America's popular music?"  I had no answer.  To be continued.

The "New" Blogger

Before Google and Blogger change this traditional interface for good, I will make my opinion known.  Whenever Microsoft, Apple, or any other software developer and distributor "upgrade" their programs, it has been my experience that the programs get worse.  Why?  When there was little space, and I mean memory on a floppy disk at 1.5 Megs, software writers had to be good.  They were.  Programs were streamlined for efficiency.  Now with ample space available each upgrade seems to make the interface less user friendly.  Okay.  I look at the new Blogger.  Immediately it is more difficult to use.  That is no surprising seeings as Washington wants to break up "Big Tech."  They it seems have been a large part of political corruption in the last few years.  Why make it easier for the individual to express their views?  Instead make it more difficult by making everything smaller.  Decrease the text size, and eliminate clear boundaries and helpful defining graphics.  Why not just make it a blank piece of paper?  iTunes kept getting worse.  More difficult to use.  Smaller icons.  Hidden shortcuts.  Why not make the user jump through hoops instead of spending time on more tangible things?  Not everyone has the eyesight to read cryptic memes on an iPhone.  Immediately I can't see the new Blogger interface, and why should I spend any time trying to learn a new interface?  It is because they have to pay their people to do something.  You can't keep inventing the wheel.  Sometimes you just need to leave it alone and find something new.