The Necessary Eradication of Cultism in America

 I have had constipation of the mind.  It would not be surprising, considering we just 'celebrated' one of America's most significant holidays with a dare factor +200%.  The headline of the Huff Post was "Surge, on top of surge, on top of surge... (from Thanksgiving travel)."  (I am taking this opportunity to indulge in a bit of punctuation.  Novelists do it all the time, punctuation with no merit)  They just write whatever they want ignoring English rules of grammar.  It was a grim message squawked out by the media full blast.  "Don't travel.  Don't patron large gatherings.  Be conservative for the sake of others."  It was and still is a shite state of affairs.  How can anyone think coherently, when forces are warning you you could die at any moment?  It also made anyone want to rebel against the Coronavirus constraints.  It is our lives.  It is our loved ones (if you have any).  The most travel of the year transpired this past week of Thanksgiving.  Consequently the headlines today are "Covid, covid, covid."  What is to be made of this disease of which we know absolutely nothing.  We know nothing.  There has been scant activity trying to enlighten the American people over the effects of Covid 19.  We get watered down, propagandized, filtered information on the pandemic.  The majority of it, any factual information about a disease of which we need to begin to understand, is hospital staff lamenting their ensuing burdens.  Hospitals are at peak capacity.  They have run out of beds.  They are erecting make ship morgues, Intensive Care Units, and specific Covid wards.  Okay.  I believe them.  How does the media pick their interviews?  They are not really interviews at all.  They are just snippets of various "front line" workers telling their stories.  We have seen no in depth coverage of the disease, because ironically a deadly disease demands the caution be taken.  It is kind of "hands off."  We no nothing about Covid 19 except that people who have it can't breathe.  It seems to shut down their lungs quickly.  I found an authoritative article on the disease on the internet.  

https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63

 It was interesting to me, because I have been ill for the last half year.  At first when the disease broke I was healthy.  It was not difficult to mitigate the state-imposed sanctions.  "Shelter in place."   We cook our on meals, so at first it was not a big deal.  Our dryer quit working, so we had to venture out to purchase a new one.  I am a staunch believer in saving money by doing it yourself, and so I found the dryer and put it in myself.  (It was not that heavy.)  The most difficult thing was attaching the second party power cable.  (These AC cords do not come stock with the appliances)  There is a whole aisle of cords from which to choose.  There are cheap ungrounded affairs and heavy duty professional ones.  As with any appliance using a 220 circuit, extra caution should be taken attaching the cable so that it has strain relief.  The kit that came with it did not fit our new dryer, so I had to spend some time kitbashing the parts.  It was important to me to get the cord anchored solidly with no strain on the terminals.  That way when you slide the dryer around it does not pull on the connection terminals risking a short of 220 volts of alternating current.  I was successful, and we saved a lot of money.  Now we have both a new washer and dryer.  I think each will last at least another decade, maybe longer than me.  The work installing the dryer was performed in extremely hot and humid summer weather.  I will be so bold to say that it was installed in the face of "Climate Change" or "Global Warming."  These are dangerous words on two accounts.  They are dangerous if they are true, because of their adverse affects upon our host planet and the human race.  Also they are dangerous now, because of this particular United States Presidency division has been sewn into American culture.  Donald Trump has used division as his tool for power.  Effectively he has pitted one half of America against the other.  Who knew that such a tidy and equal line could be drawn among America's citizens?  I don't believe it.  I don't believe that a state naturally could divide itself equally into two parts, one supporting one candidate and one the other.  How is that possible, an equal division?  The odds of that figure must be astronomical, and yet it continues to unfold.  Elections are being won by mere handfuls of votes.  The skinny is this presidential election set records for sheer numbers of votes.  It was an important election.  ELEX.  This is the media's new abbreviation for headlines.  The reality is Joe Biden, the clear winner, won by a hair.  It was a squeaker.  I mean a squeaker that easily could have gone the other way.  As of November 29th I feel the nation is secure in the knowledge that Joe Biden will become the next American President.  That is in spite of everything Donald Trump is doing to overturn the results.  I have been keeping up with it, and if anyone has it has been a massive, disruptive, and criminal affair.  What the Republican party has instigated has been the most low brow, immoral, unethical attack in our lifetimes.  There has been other corruption with which to contend in Washington and on Wall Street, but the campaign to overturn Mr. Biden's win is unprecedented.  What it has done is expose the true nature of Donald Trump's empire.  His administration has done a myriad of unscrupulous things over the past four years, but it was the American Presidency.  Once you have won that position, the leadership of the free world, it would be easy to commit crimes, fraud, and treason, because you have the cover of honest power.  You won a position, so the majority will assume you are legit.  So believe Donald's "Red Wave."  They do not questions his methodology.  They just believe what he says, and now we know his propensity to lie.  Much of what he says are lies.  We knew he spun the truth, but as the election grew nearer the lies escalated.  When Joe won, it just flipped and insanity broke loose.  Previously lucid, well-meaning, hard-working lawmakers went bat shit.  It is a stark thing to witness, educated and often exemplary attorneys selling their souls to Vladimir Putin.  Simply Rudy prosecuted the mob in New York, and proceeded to take their place via Ukrainian surrogates.  He took over the New York rackets, but it took a while for that to unfold.  As far as Sydney Powell, she received her BA from Chapel Hill in 22 months and blazed through Duke law school.  It would appear she was a respected figure in law as was Mr. Giuliani.  How odd to see two former white knights sell their souls to the devil.  Is it age?  Is it senility?  Is it dementia?  There is no other explanation.  Hugo Chavez?  To watch the Republican party resort to such criminal means to win a presidential election is a nod to the resurgence of white collar crime.  We have lost touch with most of American history during the Trump tenure as president, and this was the goal.  It took until 2020 for 1984 to manifest itself, and it is clear as a bell.  America diverted its own demise by mere fractions of words.  The guerilla army which massed this attack exposed themselves as exactly what I predicted.  Nonsensical terrorist events have no use other than making people aware, inflicting pain, and causing inconvenience.  Killing innocent citizens whether in a school, a movie theater, or a church does not achieve any political agenda.  It creates pain but does not advance an agenda.  These ruthless attacks of which we have lost sight are a diversion.  They misguide the attention of America away from the real threat, what has become the Republican party.  In fact no longer is there a Republican party.  Perplexingly it has been dismantled and replaced with a terrorist cult lead by Donald Trump.  Again I predicted this months ago.  Extremism has been the tool of choice overseas for political disruption.  It was just of matter of time before a savvy tycoon began to make use of its techniques.  Even as the president moves closer and closer to his loss to Joe Biden, the resistance, the newly invoked "Red Wave," "Stand back and stand by," is exposing itself as a viable reactionary force to the degree that Mr. Biden does not want to spend time or resources making Donald Trump accountable for the most destructive force in our lifetimes.  They are afraid to pursue him, because Vladimir Putin is on his side, the new mafia.  To allow the United States Federal government to be bullied by this Red Wave is to allow rotting flesh to fester in America's heart.  America deserves and demands to be exorcised of this man.  What he has inflicted upon American lives for four years as our imposter president is not forgivable.  With the importance the media necessarily gives him, an iconic, influential, and continual political presence, American can not risk his continued campaign of destruction.  With the mobilization and insurgence of his "Red Wave," half of the American population, the stage has been set for a second Civil War.  We were unprepared for the desire and viability of such an event.  Instead of the meek overthrowing tyranny, we are facing the hostile overtaking of American democracy not unlike Fidel Castro's overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.  It is more common than we understand.  The threat could not come from Americans, because we are too stupid.  The threat, of which I have written many times, is from the inside.  Slowly the kings men have been put into place, and The Donald was the don.  America only has survived by the skin of her teeth.  The depth of Donald Trumps wrong doing is so egregious, only the office of the Presidency has shielded him from criminal prosecution.  When he steps out of the White House and back into public life, the wolves should and will be snapping at his feet.  The indicting of Donald Trump should be the most important thing for the longevity of American freedom.  We will get well, as I have.  It will be a massive effort, like it all ready has been.  Each day I rise and must read a new article about voter suppression, fraudulent elections, or overturning an honest result is a day I am wasting on trash.  Four years of my life have been spent taking out the trash, and now is the time for America to begin functioning as she once did.  Not using Ronald Reagan's Yuppie army, which would be impossible.  Most of those assholes are in jail anyway.  In the year 2000 they chose to amass America's currency in overseas banks, sitting, festering, and growing mold in the most destructive blow to American capitalism.  This money, America's money, must flow.  Allowing billionaires to continue to hoard America's money is a vote for Donald Trump, and the "Blue Wave" WON the election.  Priority number one should be to castrate Donald Trump's testicles.  Even then he will use his golden tongue to buy implants and pawn them off as the real deal.  If the media so chooses not to empower the Trump Family as the future of the Republican party, then the Republican party will be forced to reinvent and rebuilt itself this time with an actual platform.  The dark, fantastical, destructive period of the cult leadership of America must end now.  We cannot risk another attack, because we may not win again. 

 

A Return to the Basics of Humanity

 After purging my moxy writing about the fall of Donald Trump, I retained some residual emotional energy meant for positivity.  This impetus was meant for a brief reflection on human sexuality, something of which we read or see little anymore.  With the availability of the internet, which has changed the modern world, many things have suffered.  Commercial music was destroyed, because with the advent of a small networking idea by Shawn Parker and Sean Fanning, Napster, widely it became expected that music is free.  How could music be free to a consumer?  To expect such a thing, the content and source of music would have to be cheap.  Cheap music?  Well, that is what we have now.  Cheap music.  If one expects something to be free, then still we get what we pay for.  What we have at our disposal is cheap.  It is cheap in quality.  Perhaps it is not cheap in content, because viable recorded music sustains the test of time. (until a huge fire at Universal in Hollywood)  Music cannot be free like air.  It is not created by mother nature, although God has a lot to do with it.  To create music it takes substantial resources.  Music must be composed, engraved, learned, performed, and then recorded.  To do all of these things many artists are involved.  This harmony of events became a seminal part of American culture and of the American economy.  At one point the commercial music industry in America usurped the movie and television industry in revenue, until Napster.  Their novel idea that MP3 representations of original audio files contained on compact discs, albums, and cassette tapes could suffice for the original content, and they did.  They have for a long time, because these lesser quality audio files easily were transferable from computer to computer.  These two men created an internet protocol that allowed users to share music files.  These files were free.  The lure of free music, no matter what its quality, was too strong to resist.  Almost overnight music commodity changed to the personal computer, and people stopped buying music.  I will admit that the PC simply is the best music player.  During a different time an industry existed that supported the quality enjoyment of recorded music through sound.  It was called Hi-Fi, short for high fidelity.  The quest for the best playback of prerecorded music was bonafide, an an industry grew to support it.  (like many things American)  What a blast from the past.  This was an enjoyable time in American history, and rightly so because the  product it yielded was tangible.  Live music recorded well and played through a quality reproduction system provided a superior, uplifting, and enjoyable experience.  It is unfortunate that our millennial generation missed this.  It is not too late.  I embraced the conversion to the PC as my music play back device, because I was working on cruise ship.  I resisted at first, but then iTunes revealed itself as the perfect work aid to study and archive music.  It helped me doing my job, and I used it extensively.  I still do, because there is no more convenient method of storing music.  Ironically in my home CD's are useless.  There is so much vibration in the air from military and rail activity, CD's skip.  I have tried to remedy this flaw to no avail.  You can isolate a player from its base with dampening, but you cannot isolate a machine from the air surrounded it.  We live in air and so do our machines.  If it were possible to build a vacuum, a bubble devoid of air, then I could play CD's, and they would not skip.  Alas I gave up.  I stopped playing CD's, because of the sheer frustration involved.  In the interim I have tried many methods.  My music process has ebbed and flowed until finally I arrived at a process.  The PC or personal computer is the best sound playback device for accuracy, but you must use an external audio interface.  It was big news when the Macintosh computer began shipping with a built in audio interface.  The audio In/Out sufficed for converting digital files to analog for listening.  Unfortunately on the Macbook Pro the 1/8" headphone jack is a weak spot on the motherboard.  Often it comes unsoldered and fails to play sound.  A simple USB audio interface is all you need to convert your digital files back to analog for listening.  I discovered a wonderful sounding unit that costs $100.00.  It is the Presonus Audiobox of which I have two.  Its sound quality is superb and surpasses the fidelity of most commercially available CD players, which have become dinosaurs.  The benefit of a PC is a hard drive, which is a precision engineered device better than most audio products.  These too have succumbed to the Chinese market, and the quality of Seagate drives like many electronic products, no longer stands up.  Things are not what they used to be.  Steve Jobs realized this when he invented the iPod music player.  Unfortunately storage still was an issue, and the necessity of MP3's limits the users potential enjoyment of musical content.  When my first Macbook Pro fried its graphics chip, because Apple began using cheap products, I was forced to replace it.  This time I was careful to choose a machine that had a tried and true track record for longevity.  When I purchased this computer it came with a massive internal hard drive in terms of storage capability.  I didn't know what I would do with all of this space.  It was several years later finally I figured it out.  Video files do take up space, but I never aspired to store video on the computer.  My DVD collection is substantial, and I stand behind it.  Music on the other hand had moved to the PC.  In my return to a quest for the best possible listening experience, I made a concrete decision to abandon the MP3 file forever.  In comparison an MP3 files fails miserably when compared to the warm analog experience of a vinyl LP.  My turntable from the days of yore long had given out, although I was able to resurrect it for the period of one year, long enough to record some vintage Christmas music.  I was successful at replacing it, although it was difficult.  The swarmy environment of Amazon, or rather the discrepancies of product qualities with their descriptions on their website, is challenging.  You don't know who to believe.  It takes a myriad of research to find the best product.  Brand names have been purchased and no longer are the products they once were.  I found a Teac turntable which was a return of some kind but new in the box.  It turns out the AC adapter or power supply or wall wart was defective and didn't work.  Upon arrival I was able to fix this device easily, and the turntable seemed to work well.  A year or so later I replaced the stylus or cartridge with a better one.  This choice also was daunting.  It is at times like these when a brick and mortar store shows it worth.  You need to be able to hear the product's sound in person.  When I did finally find success with reassembling my stereo audio system, the turntable revealed a sound on my old vinyl recordings that almost was unbelievable.  It was sound I had not heard since the 1980's, warm, alive, and pleasurable.  In a nutshell audio has become a metaphor for human sexuality.  I would be so bold to say that sexual pleasure in the year 2020 is a shadow of what it once was for the same reasons.  That is humorous.  Are we lesser beings?  Have our components been pared down to the bare essentials for economic reasons?  Music mostly is free now, and consequently it reflects its value.  It sucks.  I would assume that if the same shortcuts have been taken with humanity, our resulting experiences are similar.  Maybe they still suck, but certainly they do not yield a fraction of what once they offered.  I am positive this is true.  Take a look at any B grade soft core skin flick on Showtime late at night.   To whom would this appeal?  They are terrible.  Soft core pornography at its worse.  Soft core pornography in its heyday was on film and television, not the internet because like music the product is contingent upon production.  It takes tools, knowledge, skill, and artistry to produce both.  If you curtail this traditional approach, a substantive hierarchy of production methodology and accompanying tools, you won't have much.  We have what we have, and 2020 is a cold flaccid tit.  Luckily like art there is so much more to discover. 

We Will Sustain

 It was Johann Sebastian Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, with it's second movement "The Air on the G String," better known by its arrangement by August Wilhelmj, that prompted me to rise from rest and pen another blog entry.  I have not always liked Baroque music.  It is not until you hear an entire Baroque orchestra in its unique sonic splendor with continuo and period instruments, until you may appreciate this music.  This must be by an ensemble with the appropriate balance between harpsichord and strings.  There are a few of them which come to mind.  Roy Goodman and the Hanover Band.  Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.  When you hear one of these ensembles understand the nuances of balance of sound, then the music takes on a whole new meaning.  That is the beauty of art.  There are multiple layers of goodness of which you can chip away.  It is a life long expedition, music.  The second movement of Bach's Orchestral Suite No. 3 reminded me of a chord progression upon which I have been playing for several years.  I guess it is time for me to write it down and pen a melody, in addition to this blog entry.  It has been a while since I have used a pencil to write any music.  This past year has demanded other things of me.  Music took a back seat, and that is okay.  If it's one thing I have learned as an adult caregiver, it is patience.  The adage is, "You do what you can when you can."  The rest will fall into place.  Never give up, and patience becomes a virtue.  My time scale has elongated to years instead of days.  Things show their need when appropriate.  Until then they rest quietly on the shelf.  My inner shelf is getting itchy.  One year gone, contributed to Donald Trump.  One entire year of my life has been lost because of this man.  Still, right now, to this day, this man has projected his ego into the lives of the entire world.  His influence will be epic and historic. Perhaps it will become the metaphor for the return of Satan to earth.  Once I thought that was George W. Bush.  Now I have changed my mind.  For several years I have been writing about an ensuing American tragedy.  The clues were too obvious to ignore.  Whether it would become civil war, a coup, or the destruction of democracy, my instincts told me that this generation, those who are living in 2020 will endure something brutal and trying.  It has happened to other generations, and luckily until now we have avoided such an occurrence.  I felt it was coming, America's domestic war.  Perhaps it began with terrorism on our native soil, which exposed itself as American's themselves.  School shootings.  Mass genocide.  These things were aided by the availability of the AR-15 assault rifle.  I believe in our Constitution's right for Americans to bear arms, because we, a well armed militias are the last defense against a tyrannical government.  Who knew that government would expose itself as the perpetrator, and that well armed militia erroneously would defend our enemy?  Shit.  That is ironic, and perhaps that could sum up the utter confusion of today.  America elected a cult leader, dictator, communist, and demagogue.  Let me reiterate that word.  Demagogue.  It's definition is:  a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument.  There you have it.  It is not unusual.  Most other countries in the world all ready have succumbed to militaristic, authoritarian, oligarchical tyranny.  America is the exception, so it was our time.  The attempt was clever, subversive, and tactful.  It not yet is over, until Donald Trump and his family are out of our White House.  The waiting is excruciating, and more disconcerting is we must witness the most significant fall from grace in our lifetimes.  It would seem most parties are content in the knowledge that there will be a peaceful transfer of power on January, except Bill Maher.  He is counting on something else, but also he needs viewers for his show and their accompanying ratings.  The rest of televised media also needs viewers and ratings, and now I am beginning to see the fine line between reporting the news and garnering ratings.  A Fox News tinge has emerged on MSNBC, and it is annoying.  I don't like it when a news media tries to elicit a visceral emotional response from me.  It is not their place, or is it to stand on a soap box and preach fire and brimstone?  One of my biggest pet peeves is having my emotions manipulated.  As an artist I am aware of my own emotions and their connection to my well being.  Having them used as a methodology of indoctrination annoys the hell out of me, because I know better.  Also your instincts necessarily rely upon your emotional responses.  When Satan gets involved they way he does pushing your buttons, the lines get blurred.  Joe Biden is the President elect, but never have I felt more vulnerable to a violent coup than now.  I do not believe the red wave is capable of such a task.  I also believe the United States military, which incidentally is flying by right at this very moment, the mysterious "Generals" charter jet, or Compass Call Command plane, now knows the difference.  It took a year for the military to come around, but they did.  General John. F. Kelly, Jim Mattis, and Michael Flynn all I feel see the inherent danger in Donald Trump.  It is not consoling with Mr. Trump officially still our Commander in Chief.  With his recent spate of desperate, maniacal, and blatant crimes trying to engineer his own re-election in spite of an obvious loss, this man should be removed from office.  He should have been removed upon his own impeachment, and yet Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. allowed this war criminal to remain in power presiding over the entire nation.  This is what has created the unrest.  A known criminal was allowed to remain President, and this is what we have to show for it.  Let me shore this up.  In the eyes of millions of American citizens plagued with a fatal virus and consequently loss of income and support, the Trump campaign (and I reiterate "campaign"), not the office of the Presidency, wires three million dollars to the state of Wisconsin for a PARTIAL recount.  THREE MILLION DOLLARS!  Those are some desperate souls, but more alarmingly realize what could be done with that amount of money.  This is the fundamental problem with what has become Washington, DC.  Easily all of the problems of the entire world could be solved if it were so chosen.  Instead we, the American people and the rest of the world, have been forced to imbibe the most distasteful, humiliating, and deadly poison of our time.  It is not the Nazi genocide.  It is not the slaughter of Native Americans at Wounded Knee by the United States Army.  It is not the innocent loss of American lives in a flawed Boeing produced jetliner.  Instead right now the temperament, the feeling, the mood of America is what Donald Trump himself is feeling.  Where else could it come?  Americans will remain hopeful, because it is all we have.  A vaccine will be effective.  The economy will rebound under the guidance of President Joe Biden.  Democracy will be saved.  This man on the other hand, his failure is epic.  He has no place to go.  If the New York Times is accurate, the Trump family is four  hundred million dollars in debt.  Donald Trump has committed crimes which have not been indicted only because he is the sitting president.  These things, these ideas, have been instrumental in his platform.  Filing bankruptcy.  Avoiding prosecution.  Bribing officials.  Intimidating workers.  When Mr. Trump finally does step out of our White House, it is a bleak picture for him.  Completely it is at his own behest.  The irony is tangible, and you can see it on his face.  Rudy Giuliani's hair dye dripping down his cheek like a zombie.  Their fate is sealed.  If Donald Trump is the success always he has purported, then his near future will be his reckoning.  This temperament does not apply to the American people.  We have committed no crimes.  We believe in God.  We are honest.  We will sustain. 

Repairing My Organ

Not that long ago my station in life morphed from musician to technician.  I have been fortunate enough to be able to be involved in music all of my life both as a composer and performer.  There was only one scant incident when my music inclinations were questioned.  This controversy necessitated a change in my life station as well.  It meant that previous romance or inclination for marriage change.  It turns out somehow my being musical branded me as a failure.  Never have I heard such a thing.  If I think back a long way, there were jokes in existence about making a living in music.  Wannabe comes to mind again.  Where are those Spice Girls?  If I were remiss in my remembrance of my own musical life, perhaps I have been a failure, a loser with a large capital "L."  The things once I desired when pursuing a music career, a university level teaching position or something else where your intellect and creativity were valued and used, have not transpired.  (at least professionally)  Let me rephrase.  I did get to teach twice as a Graduated Teaching Associate.  When John Emche died of a brain tumor, I was asked to fill in for him until they could do a national search.  This was a great opportunity for me, and I took it.  The problem was is that I got the idea in my head that I might be in contention for the full time teaching position.  They told me I had made it into the top five, and that was encouraging.  I witnessed only one live interview with a candidate.  One.  Perhaps there were more.  Needless to say I didn't get the job, and he did.  It was a simple choice for them.  Credentials, clout, and contacts.  The three "C's."  (and I just made that up)  It is true, about college hiring that is.  Credentials, clout, and contacts.  Credentials get you respect, so every academic is focused on acquiring them.  There is a tangible and easily recognizable path to these credentials.  Read any job description or VITA file of an academic, and it is extremely clear.  I won't go into it, but you'll get the drift.  Performances with major orchestras globally.  Prizes.  Scholarships.  Publications.  Clout.  Then there is the other important factor.  Contacts.  If you have received any of these accolades, then you have been in the circles which dole them out.  You have become part of the "In Crowd," as Ramsey Lewis would say.  They believe your contacts will connect with your new position bringing notoriety to them.  It makes sense.  Academia is a word of mouth entity.  It is one guy saying something about the other guy.  There is no cold long shot.  Universities cannot risk hiring a dog.  One of your guys saying another guy is okay is how it works.  Oh, I'm in the "Good Old Boy" network.  Trust.  Screw impartiality, fairness, or diversity.  Why spend your valuable time considering a stranger?  This is the way it works.  Rest assured any position you see advertised in most cases all ready is filled.  They do the job search because they are required.  I would surmise they have a replacement in mind a few years in advance.  Can't have change.  It is is working don't fix it.  Upon reflection this seems like a very bad idea.  Conservation.  The American South is conservative.  They like to keep things the way they have been, and that means those who have the money keep it.  It also eliminates mobility, opportunity, and advancement.  It is almost autocratic.  You better had fit into the group, or out you go.  Enough of this boring rhetoric on staid anachronistic politics.  That is all we have seen for four years, and my soul is almost dead.  Beating a dead horse over money, power, and control.  It used to be artistry, professionalism, money, power, and celebrity.  Consequently we have no celebrities anymore.  How are they produced?  What is the protocol?  With Donald Trump as a model, you buy your way into it.  You buy your popularity.  Who cares if you are popular?  If what you worry about is people liking you, then you are off course.  It is about the art.  You have to do something other than make money.  Usually it involves talent.  Reality TV destroyed this sequence of events.  Completely it annihilated the hierarchy of American pop culture.  Greatly also it obscured the process of success in academia.  Now that we understand American academia is not a pinnacle of values, I will move on.  It took me a while to recover from this loss.  Dramatically it was laden with tumult.  I fell from grace in a major way, and it was hard.  Four years of clinical depression ensued.  I am talking about inexplicable, tormenting, physical and mental anguish.  Depression is a serious disease, and no one should be one bit of remorse about having it.  It is not your fault.  It is a physical disease, and your environment has much to do with it.  I would go as far as to say your environment is the major part of it.  To find relief from this illness, often you must move.  I stumbled upon the live stream of the OSU Jazz Lab Band on Youtube this evening.  OSU is where I worked on my doctorate in composition.  I spent almost ten years in Columbus, Ohio working on music.  When I saw the feed, it was Hughes Hall auditorium where I recorded many concerts via the audio recording position.  I developed a fundamental love and understanding of vocal art music from recording these concerts.  A college aged woman who could sing in Italian, French, and German?  Holy shite, Batman!  What a turn on.  A powerful, talented, intelligent woman.  Not a bimbo.  I teared up for a few seconds, when I remembered giving my own language proficiency recital in this auditorium.  What the hell is that?  Oh well.  It was an excuse to give a recital on your major instrument.  I chose a jazz trio, and I played acoustic piano.  We played mostly my compositions with a few jazz standards thrown in.  In the midst of the Covid 19 lockdown, I am beginning to miss my old musical life.  There is more to teaching that lecturing about information.  There is a cultural element to teaching, and you have to want to do it because you like relating to young people.  This particular attribute has worked well for Holden Thorp.  He is an earthy academic, and is not a mystery whence it came.  It is that part of the profession I am beginning to miss.  It was a long time ago for me teaching.  I do not think it could be said I was a failure or a loser.  If that criteria was monetary success or money, I may not qualify.  It never stopped me from pursuing music.  A majority of the time I never really thought about money.  It was ingrained in me to create the best music possible either with a pencil or with a performance recorded or live.  I found an appropriate outlet for my aesthetic working in the cruise industry.  Unlike America they offered music jobs which used my skills.  It is common knowledge that the cruise industry has been stymied by the pandemic.  All of those well paying music jobs are on hold.  I can't imagine what all of those performers are doing.  My original thought was I went from musician to technician, and partly that is true.  I have had success restoring Rhodes and Fender/Rhodes electric pianos.  I have been able to maintain most of my music studio including vintage synthesizers.  Everything I own works, except a few vintage things I acquired at the death of a friend.  What has been a real challenge is my Hammond A-100 console organ went on the fritz.  After I had it dialed in and sounding exemplary, suddenly there was distortion, inexplicable distortion.  Our local Hammond technician is ill.  There was a capable buy in Raleigh, NC, but although he posted authoritative repair videos on Youtube, he would admonish you for asking if he did commercial repairs.  He was a bit of an asshole.  Your resources are slim when it comes to Hammond repairmen.  I figured out from scratch the Leslie interface for my A-100, and it was complicated.  It meant I had to understand how it worked.  I installed it, and always it has played flawlessly until now.  When you do take the time to read up on the Hammond organ by its bevy of purveyors, they all say one thing.  "Oil!"  This must be interpreted with chaste.  Hammond organs often sit neglected for long periods of time in garages, in storage, or in barns.  When they sit like this, the metal parts will seize from oxidation.  Rust.  You must oil these particular instruments and wait for the penetrating oil to do its job.  For the rest of us, the rule is very different.  Once a year.  Fill the oil cup twice, and that is it.  No more.  If you do put more oil in what can happen is what happened to me.  It will leak out of the oil trough, to the bottom of the tone generator, through the wooden shelf and in my case into the 428 kit box.  This small metal box houses a transformer, a capacitor, and three resistors.  Oil found its way onto the electronic components, and the transformer began to fail producing intermittent and demonic sounding distortion.  Before I really isolated the problem to this interface for the Leslie speaker, I troubleshot the Leslie amp and had it rebuilt.  It would seem more than one issue occurred at the same time as does in life.  The same also is occurring now with Covid 19.  This often fatal virus is much more dangerous than most Americans know.  It causes a myriad of physiological failures of the human system.  In short Covid 19 causes "leaky vessels."  Gel builds up in your lungs, so a respirator isn't always the best idea.  Kidney failure among other things has been found widespread in Covid fatalities.  It makes your vessels leak, and they can leak in your brain, in your abdomen, or in your heart.  Shazam.  That is a nasty disease.  It targets those with other illnesses and exacerbates their consequences.  This is a man made disease, and to this second we do not know who manufactured it.  Trump's "Red Wave" is raging, and yet they don't seem to understand some unknown enemy of the people unleashed this disease on the entire world.  I am beginning to believe in addition to targeted attacks, the meandering nature of the pathogen is proliferating unabashedly.  It is an attack on the people!  We must go own.  My Hammond gets sick and fails to be my catharsis.  Instead I have spent months trying to diagnose its illness.  It stands to reason a musical instrument as old as me and our house would need some attention at the ripe old age of fifty-eight.  As the Leslie 142 sits rebuilt and worthy, it awaits the resurrection of the AO-28 preamp.  I believe its ailment was instigated by the failure of the 428 kit allowing voltages to go where no man has gone before.  You can't let your AC leak into your DC, that is the common rule of tube amplification.  I am having a bona fide professional address my problem, and with Covid 19 it has been difficult.  Like an illicit drug deal I have to take the goods to the "meet" and wait for the results.  I will be glad when it has been resolved, because every man knows it is not a good day when his organ doesn't work. 

No Dance for You

The news on the weekends always is negative.  (I don't feel like ranting, but....)  Writing also serves the purpose of catharsis, and today I need some.  I tried twice to purchase ground chuck today to no avail.  That is two strikes for a menial task.  Maybe it had more substance than I realized.  Covid 19 is rocking the world, and people are hungry.  Kinlaw's meat store was jam packed with patrons.  It felt like a carnival.  I only made it a few feet inside the store, before I realized I would have to stand in line for a long time.  I opted for the alternative plan, and that was another store.  Equally it was as daunting.  A combination of the distracting aggressive background music, many people traveling in different directions, and high tension forced me out of the store with no goods.  Strike two.  How difficult can it be to buy hamburger meat?  I didn't give up.  Carlie C's was my last hope, and they had ground chuck like I wanted, but it was four dollars a pound.  It looked fresh and good, but that was two dollars a burger.  I don't mind paying for good food, but usually ground beef is cheaper.  I just couldn't bring myself to buy it.  Too expensive.  I chose a bargain pack of shoulder steaks, and they were tough but tasty grilled on our natural gas unit.  This was a weekend in 'Nam.  The headlines on the weekends always are negative.  It is like the "A" team has a weekend, and headlines are phoned in.  The most concerning aspect of news is, I am not sure America ever will remember they way it was.  I have lived long enough to remember better times.  I lived through both the 70's and 80's.  Most people have a high holler about the excessive 80's, but I have no beef with this decade.  Film, television, and music were functioning at a very high level.  John Hughes created so many period piece films, they ended up defining the culture of the 1980's.  Again I don't feel like ranting, but I do.  I don't want to begin complaining.  Whining like a ninny.  Sometimes you must.  Our news and politics is a mockery of America.  There is a simple reason.  We have forgotten how honest capitalism must work.  You can't outsource manufacturing to third world countries, and we have.  You can't blame industry owners for wanting to pay a fraction of a living wage if they can get by with it.  The exchange rate inherent in Globalism is a huge boon to industry.  It also fucked America in a major way.  That is a great technical assessment, but it is true.  America's tycoons threw in the towel for the American worker and hence the middle class a long time ago.  That in itself was the end of America.  America cannot be a third world country and survive.  It belies our core principles and an ambulant middle class.  Without the possibility and prospect of improvement, growth, and success, capitalism fails.  It has.  Americans are working for slave wages as the cost of living has continued to rise making the tycoons richer.  It is a  broken record.  Now my ears are going to ring to excess.  As the low flying aircraft draw crisscrossing chemtrails across our once blue sky, life underneath is interrupted.  It is not normal for a city to exist in such a state especially on a Saturday.  The headlines are negative, the population is being strafed by aircraft, and people are manic about a sunny day.  It was crazy, and easily I was defeated.  My recourse was to cook a tasty meal in my own kitchen, despite the bullshit that surrounds me.  I did.  Steak on the grill.  Mixed stir fried veggies, and yams.  It didn't make me feel any better, because depression ensues when no solution is in sight.  I don't see on.  I see no reason to make music.  Napster murdered the commercial music industry and rendered music valueless.  Artists receive alms for the poor in percentages of pennies for royalties.  It is a disgrace, and consequently music has suffered.  Film has suffered.  Television has suffered the most, and what it has become is America as we now know it.  Tabloid America.  That is what Mr. Trump brought to the plate.  He operates at the level of a poor television show, and America can't remember the past.  We make a conscious decision to dumb down our youth by neglecting public education and then take advantage of them.  Burden them with debt.  Brainwash them into submission.  Don't teach them how to think, question, and fend for themselves.  That is because they don't know yet that is happening.  The entire red wave equally is as gullible.  They don't know what is happening to them.  It is frightening.  No one has my back.  When I was resting a few days ago listening to Lester Young and Sweets Edison, images began popping into my mind.  I fantasized about how I would like life to be, and it readily is not possible.  It didn't entail living in a gilded castle.  There was not a mansion or yacht or luxury car involved.  It involved jazz music, dancing, and romance.  At one point in American history these things were synthesized together.  This particular Lester Young recording, which was new to me, had an aura about it that I never had experienced before.  Fifty-eight years old and never experienced The Prez.  That is a good thing, but it made me want what I cannot have even more.  Swing or salsa dancing in a Cuban club with crack musicians and pleasant women.  Such a doldrum fantasy, and yet my life missed it completely.  There was no dance.  There was plenty of music and romance, but dancing.  I was in the wrong geographic region to expect that, the American South, a red state.  However I tried the women I dated could not dance, nor did they want to.  Such a simple thing, a partnered enjoyment of physical rhythm, but in public to music.  I didn't suffer, because sexual activity filled the void.  It replaced it.  Only now after I have studied music for many years to I realized the value and importance of dance.  It is courtship, but it is more than that.  It is politics.  It is opinion.  It is intelligence.  The life I live today is so far from what I want, I see no path of salvation.  Deal with that.  

Wannabe

 Unfortunately I am not privy to the facts of Ground Forces Command located at Fort Bragg, NC.  What I know is this.  There are flurries of activity which include a multi-million dollar charter jet often which flies into Grannis Field.  Often it flies directly over my house, and in the last week it had been watching me.  That sounds absurd and insane.  Delusional comes to mine.  Who could suggest such a thing, that they would be of interest enough to merit aerial surveillance by some group?  There are many aircraft, and as a high profile military base this is to be expected.  Before Base Realignment and Closure, BRAC for short, decided to close other bases and combine them here at Fort Bragg, the aerial activity seemed normal.  82nd Airborne drops, deployments of heavily loaded planes, and now the practicing of drone pilots.  One lives right next door to me.  A few years ago during the Obama era, drones came to the forefront.  They need to practice somewhere, so why not Fayettenam?  Now I am being surveyed and ostensibly intimidated.  I have written unkind words about the railroads before in many Letters to the Editor of the Fayetteville Observer.  I do not like the railroads one bit, and I am a model railroader.  More succinctly I am not a fan of AC traction of which no one knows a thing.  AC what?  A red wave almost re-elected Donald Trump the the presidency without understanding what he is about.  He is a skilled front man.  Fronting is what he does best.  He fronts the Trump Organization, and this bullshit is what has built his business.  Anyone who has taken the time to read, listen, and understand his tactics understands he is dishonest.  That may not bother the red wave.  Honestly in life in my mind is the most important thing for humanity.  It is the ultimate responsibility, one we are implored to adhere to each and every day.  I may sound delusional, but I am honest.  I tell the truth, because even in a pitted and painful way the truth ultimately will set you free.  It now seems like that may be in a different life, one after life on earth.  Damn.  I am not ready to throw in the towel, kick the bucket, or give up.  I have things still to do, mainly because I am not doing much of anything now.  That isn't true, but what I am doing is not in my chosen field of interest.  I would like to continue producing music like I have my entire life.  This past year I had to stop making music for a large portion of my life.  It was spent keeping tabs on the presidential election ensuring potty mouthed Donald Trump would not again be re-elected the leader of the free world.  My prayers were answered, and I do feel a bit of relief, but it is not over yet.  When Mr. Trump became President the quality of life of my town declined.  There was a direct relationship between the election of Donald Trump and the military industrial complex which exists in close proximity to my home.  Never did it seem an issue before.  We get rocked by the Marines when they bring their big guns.  We witness and feel every deployment, because the families of deploying soldiers surround us.  How can we now pay attention to the military?  We do, because like honestly it is a requirement to live here.  Often I wish it weren't required.  I myself did not chose to be a military man, although I have no bias or animosity against those who do.  My grandfather was a full bird Colonel in the United States Army and served in World War l.  (That was the first world war, on horseback)  My father also was a corporal in the army band in Germany.  What is going on at Fort Bragg to me is suspect, and certainly they have buttoned up their activity like a finely sewed gunnery jacket.  They have built a billion dollar access road and put railroad tracks underneath the soil.  They hauled so much dirt out of there, you could have built a mountain in the Sand Hills.  A look at any Google map will show you most of it, except for the underground mechanisms.  Who knows what goes on out there?  In the last week or so, the machine has been raging.  Even in the midst of a deadly pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, the trains have begun running again and the military industrial complex is hard at work doing something?  What would it be?  Whatever it is it is tangible enough to merit the firing of our Secretary of Defense and a quick rebuke from the Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, General Mark Milley.  It was on the front page yesterday this covert operation involving the Pentagon and Department of Defense.  It has been reported in the news that Trump is selling arms to Saudi Arabia to the tune of three billion dollars.  This package includes drones, F-16 fighter jets, and other munitions.  The red wave ignorant of most things would never have payed attention enough to have learned that while Osama Bin Laden may have propagated the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers in lower Manhattan, it was the lower Saudi royals who were responsible.  This is the United Arab Emirates of which I am speaking, the same country to whom our president is selling arms.  This is transpiring in his last ten weeks of the presidency while his only public duty has been saluting a wreath in memory of fallen soldiers.  This gesture so highly is inappropriate, because Donald Trump never served in the United States military.  Instead he dodged the draft.  Saluting now, although inexplicably he has become the Commander on Chief, is not appropriate.  He does not deserve to salute anyone, and his gestures are a mockery of all Americans.  He is a child in front of the television set, and his complacence, narcissism, and irreverence to his presidential duties is an abomination.  Now he is trying to make a quick buck on his trip out the door.  Donald Trump should have been forcibly removed from office months ago, because he successfully was impeached by the United States Congress.   The seediest corrupt contingency in existence led by Mitch McConnell allowed him to stay, and the lives of Americans, their blood, is on their hands.  Period.  Let's watch Trump stick his hand in the cookie jar the same way Hank Paulson did through George W. Bush.  We could not be much more gullible lead by an ignorant red wave of maverick, cavalier, Trump wannabe's.  Where are the Spice Girls when you need them? 

It's Time to Go

I can't get anything done, but I have not had the wherewithal to compose my thoughts about the election.  It has been a potpourri of antagonistic, celebratory, and recalcitrant feeling.  For a brief fleeting moment I was ecstatic about the election of Joe Biden for President.  Still I am, but as everyone is witnessing the refusal of Donald Trump and the Republican Party to recognize and concede defeat is agonizing.  Colbert would say when you wrestle with a pig your clothes get dirty and the pig likes it.  This is exactly what is transpiring.  My elation was cut short immediately by the realization that I am living in a starkly red state.  In fact both of the Carolinas are red states, and Lindsey Graham, a bone fide lair and hypocrite, was re-elected.  Emotionally I am drained, and to understand that the fight will continue was too much.  I turned it off until now.  The American South continued to wage the Civil War decades after it was declared over by the Emancipation Proclamation.  Although Abraham Lincoln had freed the slaves, our American South, not the "New" South continued to lynch freed slaves until the middle of the twentieth century.  That is a bit of a misnomer.  Slavery was eradicated, and yet a rebellious and separatist American South belied the national mandate and continued to persecute African-Americans.  This aberrant and criminal behavior necessitated the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950's.  While the persecution of any racial or ethnic group by another is unchristian and evil, perhaps its severity was mitigated by it resulting cultural expressions.  A strong, dominant, and long lasting movement resulted and created meaningful and influential artistic expression in American culture.  Both film and music were vehicles for this protest, and an important messages was broadcast to all of America.  The election of Joe Biden is the cusp of a new and similar expression, and it will require and demand the same amount of artistic passion mustered by its original purveyors.  Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and the Black Panthers, not to mention Louis Farrakhan, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and others forged the foundations of race equality in a sharply divided United States of America.  Some of this division had been quashed, but the election of Donald Trump necessarily targeted this bigotry and used it to its favor.  The work still is to be done, but we are on the right path.  My elation with Joe's election was truncated, because the tangible sentiment in the air in America today is not joy.  It is trepidation at a still impending pandemic killer.  It is the loss of millions of jobs and income.  It is the postponement of American life as we have known it our entire lives.  For the first time in our generation Communism has reared its ugly head.  It was instigated by Donald Trump.  When I take the time to reflect on the joyous news that America rallied and defeated this harrowing bully, dictator, murderer, and thief, I can feel happiness.  It is a strange fruit complicated by the recurring image of a dead Negro hanging from a noose in a tree.  I am not quick to embrace this feeling, because 2020 has been a torment of mockery of American freedom and happiness.  Knowing that I am surrounded by a majority of Trump supporters is a cold slap in the face.  If they had their way, American democracy would have failed in the greatest upset of modern times.  The pinnacle of political and governmental success publicly would have burned to rubble.  Knowing that my back is not watched or had is not new.  I have known we are on our own for a long time.  What it is is infuriating that a red wave of ignorance, culpability, and irresponsibility threatened the free world.  I guess it was inevitable, because freedom, especially American freedom, the most cherished and envied freedom worldwide, always will be tested.  It is a small miracle it survived.  As for our current President's ill behavior, and his patronage by an equally as corrupt Attorney General, my feeling is this.  This grifter and his televangelical family has been sponging off of the American people for long enough.  They did it before Donald Trump was elected president, learning and taking advantage of the American tax code and its inherent weaknesses designed for such advantage.  Honesty and integrity no longer are prerequisites for success in capitalist America.  Instead with the purposeful eradication of God and Christianity as tenants of American life, evil has proliferated.  I am angry at Donald Trump, and it is time for him to get his family out of our White House.  They no longer are welcome, because their free ride is over.  America has chosen their new leader and first family.  Without expressing what I truly feel and at its true amplification, Trump should concede defeat.  It is time for the lowly band of drifters to move on.