The Orchestra Piano Gig

I have had lucid dreams about the cruise ship orchestra piano job.  Somehow I got stuck with this gig, and it is because there are not many brave enough to tackle its challenges.  While often the position becomes a lame duck spot (because keyboardists simply can't do it), and when this is the case the musicality of the entire vessel sinks to the level of "canned" or "industrial" music.  The music on a cruise ship by default is such.  They have elaborate production companies who design, implement, and produce their shows.  Within this construct is an amazing amount of ship politics, and this political regime is infused with homosexuality.  Why?  What does being gay have to do with producing ship production shows?  Your guess is as good as mine.  I don't care to spend my time thinking about such things.  It is an unnecessary evil, and exactly like the American military (directly from the horses mouths) you better accept it.  It is not spoken about.  It just is.  We have the Catholic Church, their clergy, and their alter boys.  We have the Boy Scouts, their leaders, and their prey.  We have Hollyweird.  We have Bill Cosby.  We have Jeffrey Epstein.  (or we had him until conveniently he leaned against a towel tied to his bed and seemingly suffocated)  We have gay Army generals, of which no one speaks either.  I am beginning to think this Gay Mafia is the new enemy.  I did not intend to write about homosexuality.  I would rather never think about it again, but it has become entwined in every aspect of our lives unbeknownst to us.  Necessarily when you do a ship orchestra piano job, you will be dealing with homosexuality part of the time.  What a drag.  What more it is a total and complete distraction from the job intended.  It becomes manipulated into something other than what the company intends.  The creative or artistic component of society often gets skewed to the gay side.  Why?  There is enough on the plate of an orchestra pianist without being distracted by this.  If the employee who finds himself in this position is not capable of fulfilling its requirements, then the cast and orchestra become a drag show.  This often is one of the slants applied to cruise ship production shows.  If your production singers are not strong, then the easiest methodology is to turn the shows into camp.  It is disgusting.  In one particular show the capable and strong female production lead belted, "I am the Man of La Mancha."  Clearly she wasn't, and it was a tragedy those on the production end were irresponsible enough to ignore the gender identities of the original songs.  This is an issue with which America is faced today.  The idea that human beings have become androgynous amebas, big globs of non gender fat cells with no identify of their own is ludicrous.  It is gender or sexual orientation that makes life interesting.  To regress to the level of earthworms is disgusting, reprehensible, and sickening.  It is a requirement to become gender neutral when working in the cruise industry, but I won't go into why.  Certainly it is easy to control your herd if they are mindless, sexless, amebas.  With that idea in mind lets look at America.  We are Communist.  Our major providers who pay no taxes are Amazon and Walmart.  Legislation was passed by the Donald empowering corporate America and enabling them to take from the coffer but not give back.  We are Communist.  Our rebellious voices have been quelled, our artists and role models have either died, sold out, or become sexually depraved, and there no longer is economic or social mobility.  We are addicted to smartphones and walk around looking at our palms.  What does any of this have to do with America, the orchestra piano job, and the rest?  The answer is you must adhere to these unspoken principles to survive.  Fine.  You know that going in.  There will be little or no creative license in your keyboard performances.  You will do as you're told, and you will try to play to match the rhythmic concept of the "canned" or "industrial" nature of the production music.  In a nutshell this means there is no live feel to the music, because it is prerecorded with a rigid click track, and the 'tracked' performances usually realized through MIDI are generated by a computer sequencer.  These computer programs choose the most base and rhythmically devoid rhythmic concepts in existence.  As you will find trying to match a keyboard track for many cruise companies, the physical motion is stiff, robotic, and unmusical.  This is a musical fact, and never will it change.  It would be far too difficult and costly to ask a producer to provide human musical performances.  Some cruise companies are better than others, and whether you believe it or not groove, musicality, and humanity in the production shows predicate ratings.  For one ship only I was allowed to bring keyboard equipment to my job.  I designed and assembled a small rack of keyboard modules that sounded much better than the stock Kurzweil provided in the theater.  I had worked on the ship before, so I knew the shows.  I brought to the productions a heightened musical sense with keyboard performances to match.  In less than one week the ship was rated number one in the ratings.  Suddenly new enthusiasm emerged for the shows, and they began to renovate the sound and lighting systems in the main theater.  New equipment began to arrive including a sophisticated espresso machine for the crew mess hall.  This is the power of music and a well conceived, produced, and performed musical show.  The majority of ships do not have this.  They have compromises, because the musicians hired do not have the skill or understanding how to articulate a quality performance.  Live music is a thing of the past.  How does a keyboardist confront this problem?  It is not rocket science.  Often I say my compositional collegiate training allowed me to keep the job on the ships.  I spent the majority of my time re-writing the keyboard charts, so that they could be read and played.  Most often they were a travesty of fly specks, gibberish, and compositional narcissism.  If you want the music to be performed, it must be written and copied well.  There is no short cut.  The rules of classical composition apply, and these guide lines allowed me to wade through the ego of cruise ship production politics.  People feared me, because I knew more about music than anyone on a ship.  This meant you had to take this music seriously, study it, practice it, learn it, and perform it each week.  Often it was a major drag, but then again this is work, not fun.  The concept of the "Showband" piano job was it was meant to be a "pick up" gig.  That means that the music should be written in such a way that a new hire should be able to pick up the music in a few tries.  There are no overly complicated sections.  There is little classical fare.  Often you fill in the gaps like most commercial keyboardists playing in bands on land.  Again certain cruise companies are better at this than others.  A keyboard can add a certain dimension to a show if needed, but often the orchestration is rich enough on its own and features the production singers.  One particular company used the piano sounds as the basis for everything, and its content was not unlike the music of J.S. Bach.  It was written in four voice style the way a classically trained pianist often would play.  This is unusual in commercial music.  As such these notes in the piano parts were the foundation of the entire show.  This piano part had to be articulated accurately and clearly, because everyone in the cast relied upon it.  (What a drag!)  The aid to learning a densely composed show was analyzing its content.  A copy of the prerecorded tracks was a necessity.  You had to sit and listen to these tracks (although often they were musically painful) and watch the music go by.  You would be watching poorly notated, computer generated, piano notation with few corrections.  Often the show had been transposed for a needy production singer.  It was your task to organize this music into numbers, put the numbers in the proper order, and learn the sequence of music.  More often than not the transitions between numbers were more difficult than the numbers themselves.  You learn this trick over time, just like you learn how to play Count Basie arrangements for a Captain's Cocktail.  Count Basie was a pianist, and later in his life as his skills waned he created a style of minimalist piano "licks."  He sat and grinned most of the time, and then he would drop in a few tasty piano "licks."  If you were to be successful as the pianist in the ship orchestra playing Count Basie tunes, you had one task.  Before the set you would put your music in order and look through the tunes to find these particular "licks."  Often they would be intros or endings with a few transitions thrown in.  The notes were specific, so you had to learn them cold.  Then it didn't matter if you played much during the arrangement.  What mattered was you feigned Count Basie accurately.  There are many tricks of the trade, and the biggest one is to have recordings of your shows.  If you could listen to an upcoming show ahead of time and get it in your ear, you would survive the rehearsal better.  Rest assured with certain Guest Entertainers the playing field was tilted the pianist.  Taking your written music seriously and designing and setting up your keyboard rig are the two largest requirements for the orchestra pianist.  They will try to divert you, and they will try diligently to make you fail.  Like any college trained pianist, you make the music your own.  That means having a quality digital piano set up exactly the same way with the same sound for every show.  You should program it yourself including the necessary sounds you will use on any commercial gig.  To date I have yet find one simple MIDI module that provides all of these sounds.  Instead you will have to program the given digital piano on a particular ship.  This is a drag and is time consuming, but it is the job.  If you accomplish these things, then the ship's orchestra can function without neurosis.  They rely on you to hold it together.  If you fail to do this, the gig will become a drunken sideshow.  It could be fun, but those who call themselves musicians really prefer to play the music.  

The Deeper Accomplishment

I'll start with a "hats off" to the Washington Post.  They are a quality newspaper, and one of the few that still focuses on factual, authoritative, in depth news reporting.  It would help that its owner has money to fund it.  That is how the world works and more importantly how Capitalism should work.  Make money here, spend it there.  I read my digital subscription each day, and it is worth the price.  On the other hand I am sick of reading the news in general.  We have regressed to the doldrums of the dog day summer.  Masks again, because people are too hard headed to get a shot?  One of our most notable world class athletes bows out of the Olympic games, because their leadership is lackluster.  Dig a little deeper and the pig Larry Nasser snorts from inside prison.  The debacle of his sexual molestation of competitive female gymnasts is yet to rest.  One would begin to believe these sexual molestations are normal in America.  Lying is normal.  Dishonesty is normal.  Inequality is normal.  America is not the same.  We are a pallid shadow of our former selves, and I have to wake up to it every day.  I like to keep up with the news.  I like to stay informed.  I don't like being depressed at the current condition of America.  Necessarily I must change my focus and find my own beat, and I will be the first to admit I have lost it.  I have abandoned it.  I have chunked my beat to the ground, because not one ounce of it is being supported.  When I resurrect my beat and bang it loudly, I do feel depression, and that depression is because my immediate environment is not capable of marching to this beat.  They are Jimmy Buffet fans.  They choose not to get the vaccine.  They voted for Donald Trump.  They blame Nancy Pelosi for January 6th.  What prison camp is this in which I am living?  America?  Still some faction of the world is trying to kill us daily be dropping Covid from the sky.  American industry is burning the country alive.  (A cardinal couple pair is looking at me through the window perched on a dead dogwood limb.)  The female is chattering.  I do believe birds are angels and the eyes of God.  They don't like the infrasound, and with each gargantuan blast of each wave the air is tainted with pathogens.  Havana Syndrome now purports to cause tangible brain damage, concussion-like symptoms with no concussion.  It has spread to other countries, and each ISR pod on each plane is capable of delivering the blow.  They map topography with microwaves.  There are so many aberrant planes who is to know who the enemy is?  It is difficult to find on what to work.  The Protestant work ethic always has provided a structure for success.  Today honest work no longer is rewarded, so what is the point?  We are all fucked, because America is going down the tubes.  Speaking of the toob, turn it on and what we see is glorified altercation.  Then there is previous American television, television which does not seek to separate us, incite violence, or disrupt out society.  There was a time, believe it or not, when America did function.  That time is not now, and it is a major disappointment to most adults.  When we work in the cruise industry, the young age of crew staff predicates an immature social environment.  I thought by going on ships, somehow I would find a fairy princess from a foreign country who would love me for who I was.  What was or am I?  I am having trouble remembering, because now in America we are inundated with shit.  I am a musician, but who cares?  Our country can't vaccinate itself in the midst of impending death from disease.  Who could care about music?  Music only plays a role in society when Maslow's Hierarchy of needs is met or at least acknowledged.  There are era's of American history where music became a catalyst or catharsis.  The "Blues" emerged after the Emancipation Proclamation when President Lincoln freed the slaves, but the American South refused to accept this societal and governmental change.  The Federal Army enforced the freeing of Negro slaves for several years in New Orleans, but as soon as they sailed back to Yankee-land, Jim Crow emerged as the dominant Southern behavior.  They lynched Negros.  Although the United States of America fought a bloody civil war and eventually freed the slaves, the South would not accept this decision.  Southern Blacks were loathed, hunted, and murdered.  If they were not they were subject to strict segregation from white society.  If one had a need to feel "blue," then this was the time.  There was no place for you in American society.  There is no feeling of the Blues in America now, because the Blues requires honest and sincere feeling.  Instead we have the most superficial masquerade in American history.  The soul has been sucked from our bodies, and instead we are walking zombies.  It is not surprising, because television has been teaching us to be soulless, violent, degenerates for a while.  This assault on American sensibility obviously has come from afar, and we have yet to discover whence it has come.  It could be Putin.  It could be China, because although we feign peace with this vital nation, they have stolen much American intellectual property.  They are the pirate kings of pop America.  The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and we never should forget this as the Olympics tarry on in this island nation.  I will buy Japanese electronics, but I won't trust this country.  Who do we trust, and who is carrying out this attack?  Domestic terrorism rears its ugly head often, but I don't think fundamentalist militia members would attack their own.  They could be coerced into attacking Washington, but they are not smart enough to stage a full blown coup.  Trump on the other hand fully is capable of such a revolt, and most likely he is behind it all.  All he has ever wanted was to topple democracy and morph into an American dictator like his communist friends.  For some reason no one seems to remember this.  America never will return to business as usual until the Trump Clan is extricated from their failure.  Otherwise they will continue to sew the seeds of anarchy in our democratic republic.  Meanwhile petty dribble, hearsay, and fake news will continue polluting American contentment and security.  Like Afghani soldiers, I don't want to devote the rest of my life to hunting the dissidents and systematically eradicating them with violence.  I have better things to do with my musical skills.  Music in America does not possess the power it once commanded through Rock, Funk, and Heavy Metal.  Instead we have complicit, compliant, country pop which has little message at all.  The era of Hendrix, Dillon, Elvis, Frank, and the rest is dead, and I don't see the possibility of resurrecting their messaged.  Perhaps anarchy is the best path forcing most Americans to forget their preconceptions and simply say, "What the fuck."  I can do that, but my soul tells me to work on more. 

Pay Me, M.F.

I am pretty tired of being surveilled.  When I first began working on cruise ships as a professional pianist, I was anxious to find out if the tinnitus I was experiencing would follow me out to sea.  We were sailing in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, and still my left ear was ringing like a banshee.  Quickly I surmised this tinnitus was being caused by aircraft noise.  There were no freight locomotives, the major cause of my tinnitus on land.  There were on the other hand a host of commercial jet liners flying above us en route to the Caribbean and South America.  The roar of jet noise was of equal value to the infrasound produced by invasive diesel-electric prime movers.  My left ear is an accurate litmus test for encroaching transportation.  There is an armada of air, rail, and highway traffic in a military town.  I have become familiar with most of it, but the culprit that makes my ears ring in real time as a dynamic surveillance force is elusive.  There is someone on the other end, and they seem interested in my thoughts, feelings, and other sundry human activity.  Also it is an infringement upon my civil rights this unwarranted surveillance.  How do I know they are listening?  The answer is simple, when your evening dinner conversation ends up on the front page of the Washington Post.  Amazon's Alexa app always is listening, although they purport not to spy on your life.  If you own and use these smart speakers, you agree to this surveillance.  What I do not agree to is the active surveillance of my activity by the United States military.  It stands to reason that the largest military installation in the world practices these techniques constantly.  It is their job.  The multitude of defense contractors constantly are supplying the most up-to-date technology for this activity.  L3/Harris, Lockheed, and the rest are heels deep in ISR.  Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance are the new American Army.  If there is a such thing as a pulsed microwave weapon, it would be provided by these companies.  The "Havana Syndrome" was studied by Chinese academics, and they reverse engineered the noise creating this physical malady.  It was fighter jets.  Trump's Big Lie is a metaphor for universal denial.  There is no infrasound.  It doesn't exist because it is invisible.  Science knows nothing, and there is no electro-magnetic spectrum.  Therefore nothing could be warming the earth, harming human beings, or wreaking havoc on global politics.  All of it is tangible, and this denial is just the easiest and most convenient way to disperse blame.  The causes of climate change are multi-fold.  Aircraft, rail, and vehicular traffic all contribute, but cellular communications also are to blame.  The regulations for millimeter wave transmitters have become so lax, they are everywhere.  No one seems to be alarmed that microwaves are the operating system of smart phones.  We are too selfish to ponder life without our addictions, and the level of ignorance of Americans is frightening.  Our neighbors may be killing us, and that is with what we must contend upon waking each day.  How can ever solve the world's problems?  I take pride in my musical innovation, but I will not provide it to Uncle Sam free of charge.  I have no interest in musical achievement at the moment, because inquiring military minds seem to want to know.  Go fuck yourself.  

Castrated America

 Necessarily the depravity of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and the rest of the American male sexual Olympic team must be accommodated.  How could America's favorite and black television dad be a sexual predator drugging his victims and molesting them in front of his wife?  He disputes this behavior, but often Hollywood stars believe their own hype.  A slate of female victims did not conspire to bring Mr. Cosby down.  Instead they came to understand his subtle and mostly covert sexual advances were selfish indulgences rather than contracts to promotes their acting careers.  This abuse of influence has become systemic in America but why?  In other nations much older than America, prostitution is legal.  It is not earmarked as a soul defeating sin.  Instead they way Jesus suggested it is allowed, because love or merely sexual fulfillment is a core component of human existence.  Today it is something not publicized, because the treachery of these men's behavior is embarrassing.  In a nutshell these men believed they deserved free sexual service in exchange for their prominent positions in American society.  Who deserves such spoils?  Down in the trenches common Americans struggle to unearth a vestige of love from a fellow human being.  When we are unsuccessful with a distant tradition of American courtship, a faction of American society has attempted to level the playing field by changing the rules.  The rules in this case are defined by gender.  The disparities of gender definition are not new.  It has been reported native American cultures have many degrees of gender identity.  Perhaps the simplistic man woman construct has become inefficient in America.  LGBT isn't new, but its definition and promotion in mainstream American society may be.  Most likely it is riding the coattails of the "Black Lives Matter" movement.  Minorities are sick and tired of public oppression.  This rebranding of alternate sexual identity should be understood in historical context.  Political Correctness continues to be a plague, and severe life situations do no always deserve a glossy title.  Transgender once was called cross-dressing homosexuality.  Some gay men like to dress in women's clothing.  That does not mean you should be handed a title, accolade, or position of prominence.  What it should mean is your sexuality is private, and the rest of society is not required to support your choice.  It would feel more comfortable if they did, but what can be considered an extreme disposition cannot be expected to receive universal acceptance from a a traditionally heterosexual populace.  This is a major disruption, and to suggest androgynous sexual identity should become the norm in society is far reaching.  Most would agree that God openly did create man and woman, and this pattern has remained dominant for thousands of years.  To suggest that LGBT tendencies should become the norm for America is misguided.  It would serve as a major tool in "Cancel Culture."  An assault on heterosexuality is unwarranted and wrong, and yet this is what is occurring.  As a single, middle-aged, Caucasion man each day I am confronted with a sexual identity that challenges my own attraction to women.  Not only are there fewer heterosexual women in proximity, I am made to feel criminal for expressing romantic attraction to women.  This anomaly is promulgated often in the close confines of the cruise industry.  The presence of a "Gay Mafia" cannot be denied.  It would seem sexual persecution has taken a one hundred and eighty degree turn.  What have I done to deserve the perception I am not afforded a fair and level playing field in the game of romance?  It is with this realization often I rant about the misconception of lesbian behavior.  Not only are men competing with other men for the spoils, now we are competing with other women who feel it is their privilege to engage in sexual discourse with other women of their desire.   In my modest understanding it is a shortcut through the mountain pass.  Get in line. 

The Repubican Party's Sinking Armada

When reflecting on the decade of the 1980's, something which may prove difficult for the millennial generation, perhaps it also is a surreal window into a seeming alternate American reality.  As I have studied the "Jazz Age" the persistent reality is I don't connect with that musical aesthetic or social dynamic.  The "Roaring Twenties" can be construed as a reaction to the brutal realities of World War I.  Soldiers returning home dead in pine boxes would have been a stark and stigmatizing experience.  It is not every American generation which has been beset with war.  Prohibition or the illegality of alcohol fueled this rebellion or recalcitrance to governmental authority.  The "Roaring Twenties" was a party decade which came to a grinding halt at the onset of the Great Depression.  Ten years of reckless behavior, cavalier spending, and reckless investment led America into her greatest economic depths.  The Economic Crisis of 2008 can be understood as the same.  America has yet to recover from her irresponsible opportunism of the Clinton Housing Bubble.  Wall Street may never recover and reestablish itself as an honest and steadfast investment methodology for Americans.  Instead it was exploited by the most selfish, narcissistic, and self-serving gladiatorial bankers.  Their damage to American economics is irreversible.  One could consider the era of the 1980's a glimpse of a more successful navigation of available American wealth.  While Ronald Reagan's "Trickle Down Economics" staunchly can be considered an economic failure, in retrospect this decade was decidedly more successful, enjoyable, and fruitful for American society.  The "Gulf War" necessarily emerged as a vehicle for the empowerment of the Bush Clan, but until "Dessert Storm" America was reveling in a Viet Nam free  playground of television, film, and music.  The music industry usurped Hollywood in revenue proving how Americans were open to a musically influenced life.  In her best times America was guided by a musical language personifying what often can be a complex and misunderstood political dynamic.  Music in America rarely is a tool or propaganda of the establishment.  More often it is the voice of dissent, malcontent, or rebellion.  For the most part this artistic voice of freedom has been castrated.  Subtly and discreetly the rebellious voice of American freedom has been caged, and Kevin McCarthy has become its self-proclaimed false prophet.  He and Trump are nothing more than pathetic fallen televangelists attempting to collect the alms of the gullible and needy.  The Arts are the needed mechanism of "Checks and Balances."  If ever we did choose to take them seriously, the Expressionist movement of the 1920's would tell the story.  Everything all ready has happened in the world, but the false prophets are suggesting nothing is of significance.  We are to just let it be free and continue to empower the future fascist dictator of the American Communist nation.  While the 1980's can seem indulgent they are in fact a metaphor for artistic, technological, and industrial achievement.  Perhaps billionaires and the internet have grabbed the reins, but pure technology all ready has come to fruition through Japanese electronics, Apple computers, and pure American textiles and manufacturing.  Currently we are in a billabong of war profiteering, white nationalism, and re-emergent Jim Crow.  The essence of American ingenuity, freedom, and rebelliousness are asleep under the luke warm semen of misguided, right wing, soap box shouters.  While beautiful clothing, hair, and make up are just window dressing, they were an empowering vehicle for American artistic integrity.  It is time to return to that mind set.  I believe most of America is tired of swimming in the vestiges of Trump's sinking luxury armada. 

Military Life

I am beginning to feel friends are not worth it.  Moreover I am beginning to feel that a heterosexual romantic relationship is like a thousand scorpions in your crotch.  With what we see on television, in movies (what is left of them), and experience in real life, it would seem everyone is your enemy.  What's the point of trying to have friends?  In our neighborhood it has become the military way.  Young parents with no college education and rug rats under their feet.  This morning it made me for the first time understand and appreciate a college education.  We are surrounded by military people with no college education, and I am not disparaging them.  I am pointing out the difference, and that difference is four years of college adds four years of knowledge and experience.  It is not knowledge you must accommodate to keep your job like the military.  Civilian life is not regimented like military life.  You don't have to be physically fit nor show up for PT early in the morning.  You don't have a weight requirement.  You don't have to wear fatigues or dress blues every day.  You don't have to kill the enemy.  I would say there is a stark and vast difference between military and civilian life, although in decades passed military families tried to assimilate more into civilian life.  Four years of college produces noticeable differences in one's day to day life.  What happens in this four years?  There is regimen of its own.  You must register for classes and pick your sections establishing your own weekly schedule.  You must adhere to this schedule, attend these classes, study and learn their material, and pass exams proving you have learned the material.  Much of this activity is done while living on your own for the first time away from home.  Immediately you are tasked with achieving a balance between a newly emergent social existence and academic study.  There is a high drop out rate for colleges and universities, and these institutions are more than happy to take your money for nothing.  The North Carolina State Legislature has approved the highest level of tuition increase each year whether it was needed or not.  Hence a college education comes at an exorbitant cost in American dollars, and because of a changing world it is not as applicable to real life today.  Having a college degree does not ensure you will be offered a job.  Consequently states have cut corners and refuse to pay the extra benefits of further education.  Terminal degree holders have become forsaken in America, because they are deemed to expensive to hire and pay.  Companies like cruise companies would rather pay a beginner with no experience then a seasoned experienced professional.  Herein lies one of the problems with what has become our America.  Social mobility, wealth, and security no longer are provided or supported by the Capitalist socioeconomic system.  They are commandeered by the wealthy.  The Middle Class in America has shrunk like a cold penis.  We have become a third world nation without knowing it.  After working at sea in international waters for over a decade, coming back to America is a major downer.  Veterans are experiencing the same.  With all of this lack of social mobility, accruing of wealth, and security America is not much fun.  Now some unknown faction is trying to kill us all with a deadly engineered and manufactured pathogen.  A handful of truths have emerged in the wake of this pandemic.  One is Big Brother is watching and listening to everything we say or do.  While Amazon's Alexa is a logical choice for this surveillance, I think it is coming from satellites.  Google's satellites would be the most logical.  Okay, so most of these military families have not benefited from the collegiate environment.  In most likelihood they did not excel in high school or even graduate at all.  They are people looking for guidance and identity.  Making it past these needs is not a priority, because these things conveniently are provided by Uncle Sam.  When your Commander and Chief asks you to attack the Capital and stop the confirmation of America's presidential election, what do you do?  Are you smart enough not to follow these orders and make your own ethical decision?  That is not what is asked of you in the United States military.  Simply you are asked to go kill the enemy, and they tell you who this enemy is.  Needless to say military families operate in a different theater of life than civilians.  Why have I come to believe friends or romantic interests are undesirable.  Could it be that the extreme right newly emergent Republican party has pitted Americans against one another.  If you do trust or confide in anyone today, certainly you are exposing your flanks.  It is impossible to establish solidarity in America today, because half of Washington, DC is trying to resurrect the Jim Crow Era of the American South.  People are not able to care about you, and why should they?  Everyone except the wealthy merely are trying to survive in a war torn nation.  

A Few Universal Truths (that are overlooked)

 The good old U.S. of A has grown PC.  I don't mean "personal computer," although our reliance upon computers has become endemic.  The change in our lives completely has come about because of the commercialization of the internet.  Fully I don't understand "Net Neutrality," but I know for certain that whatever decision needed to be made to ensure the sovereignty and freedom of the web was forfeited for corporate profit.  This is the way of capitalism and thus America.  Perhaps once universal truth, good will, and Christianity were tenants of American life but no longer.  We as a populace were sold out long ago.  The internet has crippled television, cinema, and music.  If you can access and use for free any of this media, why would you pay for it?  Washington is not capable of leading America, and she has proven this unequivocally.  One only has to realize what has happened in America.  If we pulled out heads out of our iPhones, our palms, that once were better used giving us self pleasure, we would see the truth.  We are so empty spiritually and physically, we cannot free ourselves of the addiction of the smartphone.  There is nothing else.  All of our traditional amenities have vanished into the abyss of the internet.  We no longer know how to communicate in person much less express ourselves through physical love.  We are a  pathetic lot of losers.  Without knowing it we are afraid to see the truth much less understand it.  The truth is America has become a mass of absorbed borg not able to understand the need for a simple vaccination or the severity of an illicit attack on our federal government and democracy.  Any other day or age the savage attack on our Capital would have been met with brutal punishment for treason.  We have become P.C., politically correct, so we are able to deny the greatest domestic attack on America in centuries.  "It was just a little day at the park," and yet it should have been met with staunch, decisive, blunt American justice.  It was a covert attack done in full sunlight under the ruse of fabricated and false patriotism.  It was a communist siege, but still we are playing the diplomacy card.  Carefully we are finding these criminals, and quietly we are spanking their bottoms like aberrant school children.  The reality is real freedom in America has been castrated with one fell swoop of the iPhone, and while Communism isn't our desired political system the participants of this system all ready knew the probable outcome of this dangerous and unregulated network.  The internet itself is not the culprit.  The culprit is Facebook and what has become of Google.  Still I use both and will continue to use both.  It does not change the fact that Facebook has become Big Brother and only because its inventor inherently is flawed.  Without a moral conscience provided by God and the lessons of Jesus documented in the Bible, no mere human has it within them to know or understand empathy.  Only heartbreak and tragedy will provide this lesson, and it is due time for big tech to fall from grace and eat a huge slice of humble pie.  The only obstacle is America has invested in this faction as a major source of our economy.  They have become a corporate monopoly, and with this title comes most of America spendable capital.  If we are to return as America, the former America, then they must return our money. 

Return from the Dregs in Fayettenam

 I can't remember in my lifetime a black mayor, nor can I recall an all black city council in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  In response to what evolved into seeming racial politics,  the Vote Yes Fayetteville organization was begun.  This scenario is a metaphor for diversity everywhere.    A table slanted to the left demands more pressure on the right and vice versa.  Your viewpoint is constructed from your own personal experiences and knowledge, so it stands to reason the perception of life highly is influenced or even tainted by your own experiences.  Your own personal experiences are not enough to determine leadership.  It takes more.  If only it were personal experience, then America would be tribal.  Here education enters the picture.  If you are stuck in a low income, economically depressed, racially segregated area, it would be difficult for anyone to see past their own meager eyes.  To escape poverty, oppression, and discrimination more is needed than a home can provide.  Once television provided this much needed national perspective.  Radio before television connected America, and with traveling minstrel shows a mainstream began to emerge.  Radio and television were the two largest educators then.  They did not seek to spew propaganda; they sought to sell soap.  Something had to pay the bills of production.  With the onset of Covid 19 and its lock down, closure of schools, and limiting of human interaction a large toll has been taken on our population.  We are challenged to find truth.  Perhaps it was not bad this isolation giving us a new social and economic perspective.  With Mayor Mitch Colvin Vote Yes Fayetteville is attempting to tilt the table of what they feel is an unbalanced governmental power structure.  I would agree that an all black government is just as discriminatory as an all white one.  Diversity is the goal and a balancing of this blood.  From VYF's perspective they feel there is too much African-American influence in Fayetteville, and this perspective largely is based upon one incident, the looting of downtown at the inception of the Black Lives Matter movement.  How you view Major Colvin's decision not to send police isn't enough to assess his job performance.  It is one incident.  It is important, but it is not the only thing.  Personally I feel having a Black Lives Matter mural painted on the street around the Market House is racist.  It suggests Fayetteville is pro black.  The Market House itself is a volatile issue, because people are drawing conclusions only from their own personal experiences.  No ones knows what was happening over a century ago, and certainly because we have been selective in our history texts, the real truth never has been told.  It is time for that.  Your perspective is what assesses your opinion about anyone or anything.  The wider your scope, the more your knowledge, and the more experiences you have will change this perspective.  Putting yourself in someone else's shoes always is an effective lesson in life.  I think Mayor Colvin made the appropriate decision not to unleash a civil skirmish in downtown Fayetteville.  Because the Police were being protested, sending them in to quell potential violence would have ended in bloodshed.  Consequently no lives were lost, but the blow to Hay Street businesses was sharp and severe.  It will take years to recover.  I remember Hay Street forty years ago when all it was was strip clubs and beer gardens, but merchants were making money.  Where do the G.I.'s go now for diversion-  chain restaurants?  The original Cape Fear Railroad had a trolley to transport soldiers to Hay Street and back when they were too drunk to walk.  Good thinking I say.  The Urban Sprawl has returned, and the infrastructure of Fayetteville has deteriorated.  Never has it been walking or biking friendly, and it is because soldiers drive jeeps, trucks, and tanks.  The protocol of the military may not be the same as the desired living conditions of civilians, and this is the major disparity of 'Nam.  You can say Mitch Colvin has failed because of Black Lives Matter, or you can reflect on the other more tangible successes in Fayetteville.  What are they?  

1.  Segra Baseball Stadium

2.  Skateboard Park at Rowan Park

3.  Splash Pads at Local Rec Centers

4. I-295 Loop Interstate

5. Grove Street Bridge Replacement

6. Sale and Renovation of the Prince Charles

Maybe these projects were underway before his election, but still were completed.  Tribalism or special interest needs always will remain as the most prevalent issue-  Who wants what and where?  The major problem in Fayetteville currently is the leadership of the police.  It has been a difficult several years with widespread police corruption nationally, but the resulting lack of policing has lead to record breaking crime and violence.  Until the sixty vacancies are filled in the Fayetteville Police Department, lawlessness will continue.  I think it is time for a new chief, because traditional police work is not getting done.  Fayetteville is cited as one of the most dangerous cities in which to drive, and its citizens do not deserve to die because they drive.  With all of this being said about leadership in 'Nam, the more important issue is economic and social mobility.  Depression is caused when no solution is in sight, and it would seem Fayetteville is stuck in a ditch asleep at the wheel.  Those driving the machine are the same as they always have been, and it is not necessarily fair.  Who gets the tilt of the table is a matter of politics.  We should be giddy that Kirk Deviere and Ben Clark have been successful earmarking millions of dollars for both Cumberland and Hoke counties.  I would suggest you take some of that money and provide supplements for new active duty police officers as an inducement for their employ.  We need police, and yet like public school teachers they are viewed as expendable.  The strongest infrastructure of a community is solid schools and strong policing.  This way students can rise above their abject poverty with the confidence they will not die under the age of twenty in a drive by shooting.  With Covid 19 America has become a sink or swim school of hard knocks.  Teaching is at an all time low, and the violence is a direct result.  We need to restore both. 

H.A.A.R. P

It's time to talk about the "Heat Dome."  Isn't it suspicious that Alaska, America's most northern state, is suffering from a heat wave?  How is that possible meteorologically?  Alaska is higher up than Maine.  California, Oregon, Washington, parts of western Canada, and Alaska are experiencing record breaking temperatures.  In trying to deduce the cause of this weather phenomena one looks at the map of red and blue states.  The heat reaches into Nevada and Arizona.  Recently what has happened politically which includes these states?  Arizona has had vote re-counts spurred by Donald Trump and his Republican Party.  Nevada flipped blue, didn't it?  Ask yourself how blue states who publicly and verbally were loathed by then candidate Trump suddenly are beset with a massive life-taking heat wave.  Ask.  Then take a look at a map of the ionosphere and the little dip resembling a map of this heat wave.  Ask how would it be possible to create such massive and widespread heat.  Think about the Marx Brothers.  Think about Harpo.  "Angels Don't Play This HAARP."  Two months ago the HAARP installation controlled by the University of Alaska Fairbanks received a 9.3 million dollar grant to open the shut down facility.  Word is they are renting it out for five thousand dollars an hour.  What is HAARP?  Many have asked the same question, and rest assured when they figured out how to do what they were working on they closed the facility and sold it to the highest bidder.  Raytheon perhaps?  What is Raytheon?  The answer-  A defense contractor.  What is HAARP?  It is a phased array radar, I think.  At least it is a high frequency radio transmitter intended to-  are you ready?  HEAT THE IONOSPHERE.  They were trying to facilitate the propagation of VLF radio waves by energizing the sky.  To communicate with its submarines the Navy uses a huge miles long antenna.  Wouldn't it be nice not to have to use that?  First we must be able to create VLF radio waves and then with a  phased array transmit them around the globe for use by the navy.  Military men who worked at the installation used to sun bathe in front of the transmitters.   That's how warm it was in that once frigid Alaska air.  Two months ago HAARP, which has been shuttered since 2015, received a National Science Foundation grant for 9.3 million to open again.  Two months later in July the hottest temperatures on record have beset the Pacific Northwest.  Go figure.  

Billy Madison Cawthorn

 I haven't reached rock music in my study of American popular music history.  Necessarily I had to go back decades before American rock music to find out what was happening.  Not many have a clear progression of the lineage of American music history.  It would be nice to take a college course and see what they are offering.  Just the first two decades of the twentieth century are enough to chew on for a good while.  Because my first favorite European composer was Igor Stravinsky, it stands to reason there was a lot going on during this time.  It is like a time capsule looking back into the Roaring Twenties.  I have yet to emotionally connect with this era.  The jazz is unique, sophisticated, and quizzical.  The bottom line is, and this is a monumental discovery in the field of jazz, Early Jass is based on the incumbent rhythm of the banjo.  It is a four stringed banjo and does not have a drone string.  This piece of information of itself is a revelation.  Has anyone ever heard of a four stringed banjo without a drone?  Isn't it just a ukelele?  My father could play this instrument as could Tiny Tim.  Thinking about the four stringed banjo it becomes apparent that is a more simplistic stringed instrument.  It was smaller and more compact than banjos as we know them.  With only four strings it stands to reason only four chord tones are available at one time.  That means four note chords only.  Chord extensions were not possible unless you only played the third and fifth of a chord with two extensions.  The harmony of Early Jass was simple, but that can be quantified by saying the harmony of music of the Classic Period was simple.  It was, mostly V-I action, an authentic cadence.  The Blues also was emerging as a musical force, so blues harmony became omnipresent.  (basically the presence of both a major and minor thrid degree of the scale) This seemingly simple concept was the basis for much American music that began to represent the African-American experience in America.  Blues notes.  In Early Jass there were no flatted ninths or augmented fourths.  It was simple diatonic harmony, and the challenge was to arrange these chords in an interesting progression with a sprinkling of secondary dominant chords.  The banjo player often played the bass line of these mostly arranged compositions.  This is the second revelation of jazz music from the teens and twenties.  It was highly arranged music, written down and read by jazz musicians.  To understand these musicians were reading this complicated music is a tribute to them.  They were highly trained, educated, sophisticated people.  I was on a quest to uncover the grass roots of jazz music, which in my mind meant some closet genius who was born with musical genius.  There may have been those, but almost all of the notable early jazz musicians were highly educated, motivated, and competitive.  Black musicians in particular knew their lives depended upon it.  Perhaps this is why they tried so hard and were so accomplished.  Desperation.  What is the incumbent or inherent rhythm of the banjo?  It doesn't take much to figure it out.  Banjo is banjo, and most of us know what it sounds like.  "A banjo on my knee."  It was a major part of early American music before jazz developed in New Orleans.  Riverboat music could suggest the proper idiom.  Jazz instrumentalists in NOLA began to play with the banjo, and necessarily they had to use its rhythmic concept.  Early Jass utilized swing sixteenth notes that were tightly spaced together to provide fire or heat.  Alcohol may have had something to do with this feeling.  Articulation also was a large part of the rhythmic concept.  In retrospect I would call this music "Ricky Tick," which is a disparaging term.  Onomatopoeia serves as the rationale for this description.  (by the way, that is a difficult world to spell.  Give vowels in a row at the end of a word.  Go figure.)  To play Early Jass you must play swing sixteenth notes, not swing eighth notes.  That could be challenging to some musicians tightening up their rhythm to such a degree.  I don't enjoy doing this, and the first time I encountered this requirement was on Carnival's Funship Victory.  We had to play a "Dixieland" set on the second day of the cruise at noon.  It was the most difficult task ever I had on a ship.  There were other difficult shows with mostly classical music which required accurate note reading.  This music was challenging.  It was brisk.  It was complicated, and it was indiscernible to me because of its swing sixteenth notes.  I tried my best fo fit into the groove, but didn't have it in my consciousness at the time to play this music.  Instead I played stride piano and early swing.  After I studied this Early Jass last year, I began to hear that early pianists didn't play swing sixteenths either.  Bennie Moten, Jelly Roll Morton, and Fletcher Henderson didn't play piano like a banjo.  Instead when they played, they turned this New Orleans based music into their own thing.  It is a combination of ragtime, blues, marches, American popular songs, music of the black church, work songs, and more.  The operative idea here is it was composed music.  It was not improvised like many of us believe.  Ragtime was composed piano music that gained widespread favor all over the country, thus it was orchestrated for small ensembles who played for society functions.  Jelly Roll Morton is one of the most odd, sophisticated, expressive pianists in history, and his playing was a juxtaposition of classical training, the "Latin Tinge," Blues, and ragtime.  By himself he invented a whole new category of American popular music.  It was deep and diverse and often lewd.  His touch on piano was elegant and musical, unlike many of the pianists who were forced to compete in volume with a band.  I didn't plan on talking about Early Jass in this blog entry, but it came out.  What I wanted to talk about was the youngest elected politician in Washington, DC from North Carolina.  Here is what he said on the evening news when reporting about door to door vaccinations.  "First they come with needles, and then they come to take your guns."  I was unaware Mr. Cawthorn was confined to a wheel chair, until I read his Wikipedia entry.  Then I connected the dots.  He was one of the major purveyors of Donald Trump's attempted siege of the United States Capital.  Damn!  North Carolina, again.  My initial response to his words was disbelief.  His age was showing itself.  He was afraid the United States government was going to come for his guns.  Truly he was afraid, and I feel that may be because he is disabled.  To set the record straight, the entire reason why American's are afforded the right to bear arms is to defeat a tyrannous government.  In honest brutal terms, IF the United States government did come to take your guns, your Constitutional right is to defend yourself, your family, and your home.  It is a Constitutional right.  You have the right to bear arms against anyone, specifically what you may believe to be a tyrannous government.  That is why you have the guns.  You must stand up and fight.  With Mr. Cawthorn that is not possible, and that is a tragedy.  In our lifetimes this has not become necessary.  A civil war has not erupted yet, but let's quit using the catch phrase," They are coming for our guns."  It is irrational, paranoid, and stupid.  To think such a thing means you are not in touch with reality or possibly mentally challenged.  That is plausible understanding the current Conditions of America.  All of us are emotionally and psychologically challenged.  We have just endured the worst assault in modern American history, and still we do not know its perpetrators.  We do not know who has attacked us.  Paranoia may not be inappropriate.  To continue to smear the democratic party with muckraking is fruitless and futile.  Only it creates a real and concrete record of lawlessness, irresponsibility, and evil.  America is not tribal.  It has not been extreme until now when far right Republicans began this campaign of rape and pillage.  America is not having it, and she will survive.  Our country is the most visible torch of freedom for many, and the world cannot afford to loose us. 

Only God Will Save Us

It is said a man is what he does.  I have agreed with this statement until now.  A man is what he does, not what he says.  That is more accurate, and it is synonymous with, "You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?"  Talk is cheap, but recently I have discovered (at least 'round these here parts) it is the key to success.  What you say and how you talk are the most important things in gaining entry into society.  These days very few people get what I say, and consequently I spend most of my time trying to communicate my thoughts.  It ends up being teaching, and that is trying.  Imagine living somewhere and no one "gets" you.  I used to expend a fair amount of energy when shopping trying to fit in.  That meant looking around, observing, and adhering to seeming required protocols.  Don't make waves.  Don't intimidate.  If I don't do this, then by default most black people don't like me.  I do know about black culture, but also I have been a college teacher.  Do I spend time trying to fit in being conversational and friendly, or do I remain "on task" and "get 'er done?"  If you are feeling no haste or urgency in your daily routine, then perhaps you do take the time.  Since America's re-opening violence has escalated.  America is breaking all kinds of records including the hottest June ever recorded.  The Pacific Northwest is experiencing tremendous deadly heat.  Global Warming is a hoax.  Heretics.  We know who the heretics are now.  This may not apply to you if you live in a pent house, a gilded castle in Palm Springs, or in a sprawling mansion in Houston.  You pay for your comfort and health.  Pay.  The rest of us are stuck with the environment.  Fayetteville never had one hundred degree temperatures.  It was temperate, and we had normal differing seasons.  We had regular winter snow.  Now it has turned tropical, and the ill effects of this heat surround us.  So does the fungi.  Heat.  Moisture.  Infection.  Certainly it does seem like the apocalypse has begun.  Fire coming up from the sea is on prophecy in the Book of Revelations.  What did we just see on the evening news?  Answer-  a swirling ring of fire in the ocean caused by an underwater gas leak.  We better be right with God, if you want to get transplanted to the new destination.  When I worked on the ships, hospitality was the most important thing next to safety.  Safety became the most important thing after the Costa Concordia.  You were required to "Greet and Smile" to everyone you saw within ten feet.  That included guests and crew members.  It did go a long way in making a confined steel cage feel comfortable.  America is not like this.  Instead I feel compelled to "open carry" when I shop in 'Nam.  A man is what he does, and there is some truth to that.  In God's eyes it cannot always be true, because in God's plan you don't always get to do what you want.  Most of the time you have to submit and free your own goals for a later date.  In these circumstances a man isn't just what he does.  Maybe, "A man is what he does and has done."  What you have accomplished in your life is important in who you are.  Your experiences are all that you have, and they make you who you are.  When they are bad you are tasked with mediating between bad and good memories.  It is challenging.  One thing I have discovered is most women are not capable of liking you for any other reason than what title you carry.  It may be your job.  DJ.  Doctor.  Mechanic.  Attorney.  Minister.  If you have a glamorous job it helps.  I have discovered those who have some kind of "game" only are empowered by the job they possess.  If Ma Rainy weren't a great blues singer, and she didn't perform every night, she would have no game.  There would be no lesbian lovers.  They are attracted to her because of her fame and success.  The voice has a little bit to do with it, but that voice living in a cabin in the woods romance does not provide.  It does not provide comfort or amenities.  It is the job and its income that provide the basis for "game."  No income, no game.  That is true around here, because people are poor, ignorant, and desperate.  Why would they waste their time on a man seemingly doing nothing?  Could it be because he was intelligent, educated, or talented?  Wouldn't those things translate into sociability?  Fun?  Pleasantry?  Love?  Lust?  Of course they may, but that is not what women see.  If a man is what he does, then he is required to do.  Actually I do a lot, but most of it is not in the public eye.  I don't do the things I used to do.  I don't skateboard.  I don't ride my motorcycles much.  I don't play the piano.  I am required to do other things, and one of them seems to have become minding my own personal health.  With the onset of Covid, this has become overwhelming for the entire world.  We are tired of it, and yet it keeps coming.  There hasn't been time for "game."  There only has been time for survival, so copulation has dwindled.  We have not come much way at all.  In fact we have gone backwards.  The amount of understanding Americans have about their peers is minimal, and it because we have stopped trying.  Psychology used to be a college major.  Can you imagine?  Trying to figure out what makes people tick?  What makes people commit genocide?  We are pretty much stuck in our own anuses, and until we get rid of the smart phones and begin to rely on our own brains again, we will stay stupid.  Will it change?  Will Capitalism every recover?  I think not.  Only God will save us. 

Pol Pot Returns?

 Capitalism has failed except for Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com and the Walton family and Walmart.  Necessary economic regulatory agencies have been either legislated out or denied the appropriate funding to do their jobs.  More likely those on the receiving side of this enormous wealth have lobbied Washington, DC to allow them to keep the majority of their earnings.  Necessarily a gross imbalance of equity has occurred in America.  The economic system of Capitalism does not work when money does not flow freely at all levels.  Money cannot remain sheltered from taxes in overseas banks, because this stagnancy hinders the free flowing of our money.  Accrued profits must be recirculated back into the system providing jobs, security, and spendable capital for the people of America.  To sock money away in a moldy vault is to render a blow to American Capitalism.  Government always has known the capability of the private sector and corporate America.  They must provide regulation to ensure this imbalance does not happen.  Deregulation of industry has been a cataclysmic mistake, because these industries have failed to police themselves.  Instead the commit grievous crimes spewing toxic chemicals into the environment killing hundreds of thousands of American citizens.  Since its advent in the l960's, C8, a byproduct of the production of Teflon continues to invade water sources and breathable air.  Where are we to hide?  Is it conscionable industries earning billions of dollars responsibly cannot dispose of their own waste?  It is mind boggling this behavior.  The United States military has done similar things failing properly to dispose of toxic solvents on their bases.  These solvents soak into the earth and reach ground water polluting the local water table.  Many have died as a result.  Needless to say the playing field in America has become extremely slanted with most of us falling into the gutter.  Capitalism has failed except for Jeff Bezos and the Walton Family.  We all love Amazon, and although they work hard to overcharge you for simple products, if you are methodical and prudent you will experience a fair shopping experience.  America loves Walmart, because they offer the lowest prices on most products.  Necessarily Walmart was the foreshadowing of the failure of Capitalism.  How can that be?  Walmart is operating in the normal channels of American commerce, but they are a corporate monopoly.  In addition their work ethics for employees are flawed.  Workers are underpaid, overworked, and lack the appropriate benefits of traditional American workers.  At some point corporate America decided America, America's people and workers, do not merit respect as human beings.  A conscience decision was made that American workers were inconsequential.  This is when the decline of Capitalism began.  Growing the Middle Class always has been key in Capitalist theory, and this readily and eagerly was applied to both China and India through the out sourcing of American jobs.  We attempted to grow their Middle Classes, until the bubble burst.  Now we are sitting on the bottom with a broken system.  The railroads have become a major controlling force in American economics, and they benefit no one but themselves.  Still they operate in our backyards.  It has become a travesty, America.  When viewing communist nations and ideology, it begins to make sense their adopted socio-economic system.  The exact things ultimatly which have killed Capitalism in America, telecommunications and a free unregulated media, are what are denied in communist countries.  Is it that they know the ultimate consequences of the mismanagement or failure to regulate these new means of commerce and communication?  Would a communist nation have allowed the insurrection against our Capital on January 6th?  It is the most contentious, bold, and significant political event in American history.  It was an attempted coup of Washington, DC.  The only thing missing was an able bodied compliant United States military.  Could there have been enough Trump followers to have successfully overtaken the United States Capital and its legislators?  If they had been overtaken, with the President still actively in power and control, would the military have accepted orders to overthrow our federal government?  In many other third world nations, it would have been the end of democracy and a free society.  Somehow diplomatically America squeaked out of its attempted overthrow.  It has been a strategically effective coup attempt done on the down low and with a complacent shrug of the shoulders.  Certainly were were fucked before we were kissed, and only now are we looking down at our mangled genitalia.  It is attacks like these that are the most upsetting, because we are not either prepared or aware of the attack.  Rest assured we know now, and the survival of freedom, democracy, and most importantly Capitalism is dependent upon our expedient mitigation of this threat.  The reinstated regulation of corporate America is crucial to this success as is a balancing of the books forcing big business to pay their fair share of tax.  How has it ever become accepted that there is no price to be paid for freedom?  Capitalism is no the Wild West, where the winner takes all of the land, the entire, town, and the Marshall's office.  Necessarily the wealth or rather nominal level of survival must be calculated, planned for, implemented, and protected.  All of these points move us farther toward a communist/socialist philosophy providing a basic wage or at least survival with modest satisfying of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.  The heyday of Capitalism is long gone, and those capable of understanding its functioning have gone with it.  There are no remnants of our Founding Fathers.  Only there is Mitch McConnell, a staid, selfish, republican who cares naught for any American other than  his own damn self.  Trump ran on emptying the swamp, and still it is teeming with traitorous amphibious life.  It the air becomes to challenging in their Washington offices, simply they duck their heads in the muck. 

Cruising on a Sunday Afternoon

I should be flattered that Jeff Bezos listens to our evening dinner conversations.  I am a fan of his Washington Post newspaper, and it is the second of two digital subscriptions I access online.  A subscription fee is worth it for quality internet news.  While I still read the Huffington Post daily online, a reputable long-standing newspaper is a better source of accurate information.  I am a fan of Ashley Parker.  I make the mistake from time to time of contemplating real world romance.  Consequently I watch and listen to figures in the news and on television and film.  I force myself into a real life scenario trying to remember upon what a relationship is based.  (I have had these before, but it was twenty years ago.)  Ultimately I am seduced by a particular quality which reminds me violently to wake up!  There are a handful of female news anchors I enjoy, and it is for very particular reasons.  Many of the news programs in the rural South are casual.  It could be said this laissez faire approach to southern news is appropriate.  In a now staunchly divided America, finding peace among one's peer has become challenging.  How does a news agency appeal to a mass, when this mass has become racially diverse?  Television has been trying to accomplish this recently, and as Bill Maher says you can't turn on a prime time television program without encountering gay and mixed race couples.  Diversity is a challenge, and America has yet to reinvent herself.  For news reporting it should be easier.  Necessarily and problematically popularity stirs into the mix.  It is a necessary evil, because likeability provides a sense of comfort and security for the viewer.  Perhaps it is the most important qualification for successful relationships.  How is that possible?  It is possible the same way sex can public relations.  If you and your spouse don't agree on things (which in my mind is desirable if you are mature enough for discussion), then sexual attraction and bodily chemistry can bridge the gap.  Personality or appearance serve a similar function, although they could be considered vain and selfish.  When I watch female news anchors the attraction or enjoyment of their broadcast is a combination of things.  As a musician I must be remiss to say the sound of their voice is crucial.  They can be physically appealing, but if their speaking voices are colloquial and not professional and refined I turn the channel.  It is unlikely anyone will change their speaking voices voluntarily mid life, unless a network or job requires it by studying drama, oration, or speech.  It shouldn't be an issue, because once these disciplines were crucial in society.  I took a speech class in college, and I learned about Shakespearean drama and operatic vocal production, and their need to project the human voice beyond the stage.  (This was before electrical amplification)  Drama and music  are Humanities, something America has abandoned as necessary for youth education.  Talent is a thing of the past, because somehow the immediacy and capability of the iPhone have suggested talent is not necessary.  You can shoot your own movie, and that is convenient.  Consequently the in depth processes of art have been side stepped.  In music composition the composition lives in the time it takes to compose it.  That requires a quiet nurturing environment rife with inspiration and creativity.  Try composing in a vacuum.  It doesn't work.  A professional can produce a quality work from sheer cognitive knowledge, and it may be substantial.  The best and most lasting pieces of music are created from human feeling, something with which Arnold Schoenberg would disagree.  I think Henry Cowell thinks the same thing.  Usually with these statements comes an inability to invoke the appropriate human feelings when needed.  Those with no feeling for the music or natural musical expression unfortunately are not remembered.  The human processes of sexuality and personality are a necessary evil in our lives.  Once in a while I will indulge in these fantasies and contemplate how a date might go if I were able to meet any of these women.  I know full well what it is about them that is appealing to me, because I am surrounded by base, ugly, ignorant people.  We have Phil Berger and the North Carolina State Legislator to thank for that.  Our teacher salaries are next to nothing, because those with money send their children to private school.  The common people have become abandoned.  Society needs a powerful infusion of energy, diversity, and creativity.  Debutantes no longer can fill the cheer leading squad.  We can't just "Leave Children Behind."  Unfortunately although George W. Bush tried to address issues in public education, his "No Child Left Behind" translated to teaching to the test.  Teaching is an art form.  When you can't teach, you teach teachers.  I had plenty of poor teachers in my college experiences, and many of them were at UNC-Chapel Hill.  On the other hand I received a full dose musical artistry, and understanding of its necessity in life.  When America doubts science, literature and the arts are not far behind.  The Donald Trump presidency is a modern day equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition.  It was a disguising snipe hunt.  (That is a bit broad, but it is a good reference for suggesting the severity of the damage ravaged during his presidency. There is a better title, and I will think of it presently.)  We are living in a modern American Dark Ages, and no one can disagree.  Until the basics of the economy and survival are reestablished, no more creative and artistic ideals can be nurtured.  I tried to compose in Cowtown after I left OSU, and I could not.  I do not compose now.  My heyday of composition was while working on cruise ships in an environment of civility, leisure, respect, and integrity.  There were bouts of Norovirus and other challenges, but the separation of the cruise ship from the rapidly deteriorating infrastructure of America and fascism of the rich was a blessing. 

The Singing Sergeants (Drag Show)

It is a pity when votes get courted without true understanding of their contributors.  America is an extremely diverse country with blood of different ilks.  None exactly are the same, and their differences make them interesting.  Homogeneity is boring, but diversity requires a concerted understanding of components.  Christianity intends and provides a homogeneous fabric for fair and loving people.  It is a good start, but culture is assembled with a latticework of differing habits, thoughts, and perceptions.  Barack Obama currently isn't in public consciousness, but the millennial generation might be the most unaware American youth of a century.  It has been beset with challenge, and this challenge has been propagated against them by older generations proving their own narcissism.  Investing in and  empowering one's youth has been essential for peace prosperity for the future.  Chaos lovers will not support the peaceful transition of power to their children.  Must the younger generation inherently fight for their station in America?  Previous generations have spawned specific creative youth identities, but the millennial generation has been abused and exploited by America.  Such behavior in other nations would fuel revolution.  Millennials are the most confused and vindictive about their personal and private choices.  To ask society to accept one's inability to recognize one's own gender suggest mental compromise.  It should be interpreted as a cloaked plea for help.  Addiction stirs into this brew until their lives become unbearable.  I understand why kids are messed up, and open homosexuality in America's military isn't helping.  It was a patronizing courting of votes with little understanding.  An institution of higher ideals which demands obedience, regimen, and discipline isn't the place for a religiously questionable sexual perspective.  When Barack Obama made this monumental decision, he did it with a smirk and with tongue in cheek.  Perhaps he did know something about his contributors.  A traditional, respected, patriotic men's fighting force was not the appropriate place to introduce camp.  What message does this send Vladimir Putin?  Instead he mocks America.  Sexual harassment in the military has become problematic.  It is tolerated, condoned, and covered up within its own sovereign jurisdiction.  Joe Biden and his administration have woken.  Gay men assert their sexuality in a predominantly male institution, while straight soldiers develop animosity.  As an organization that requires uniformity to exist, gays in the military have fractured an American tradition.  Camp revels but doesn't improve for an all ready struggling military.  It may relieve tension, but allowing open sexual contact in the ranks is a  mistake.  The military has devolved.  It may not matter, because technology is revamping combat for video controllers and unmanned aerial vehicles.  Change may be inevitable, but this change only has undermined a once reputable pool of dedicated veterans whose only interests have been upholding the ideals of American patriotism.  Homosexuality is rife with vanity, and it should have nothing to do with the United States military.

OTIS Drops Covid?

I didn't plan on writing tonight, but I have been accumulating steam to make some serious and almost certainly controversial assertions.  I have been mouthing off about AC traction since its inception in 1990.  It was not until a few year later I discovered what it was, and that was by accident.  Diligently I was using OSU's Sound Synthesis Lab to research the "Taos Hum."  Six months later I had found the source of this phenomenon, but no nobody was interested.  It was more fun to speculate on its source.  Many theories existed, and they ran the gamut from logical to absurd.  The interest in the source of the hum fueled the fire, but it didn't solve the problem for the residents of Taos.  They were miserable, and some were sleeping in pump houses, tool sheds, and hammocks in the garden.  Alas they could not escape the veritable low churning sound and vibration of this "hum."  That is because it was being transmitted through the earth from a tunnel engineered by the GE corporation for a local Molybdenum mine.  A government study said it was mining equipment causing this disturbance, but that was neither sexy nor commercial.  With all of the hoopla quietly the hum was quelled when the company declared bankruptcy from repeated environmental violation fines.  China is the go to source for many natural resources including minerals.  The Taos company could not compete, and the mine and refinery shut down.  Several moly mines still exist in Colorado near Columbine.  The technology that actually produces the hum sound and vibration is complex and simple.  It took until 1990 for man to conquer the alternation current motor, and it was with the use of the personal computer.  Semi conductors, namely an insulated gate bipolar transistor, in conjunction with a software program run on a Hewlett Packard computer allows the operator to slow the motor down by changing the frequency of the alternation current.  I have been writing about this for twenty years, and no one cares.  The more operative concern is when this technology is applied to traction in the railroad industry.  Small AC drives on a conveyor belt in a tunnel in new Mexico are one thing, but they disturbed a great number of honest, law abiding, hard working citizens.  These people, as is the pattern in America, were deemed the sacrifice for "the greater good" which really was corporate profit for a mineral company.  Donald Trump is a major proponent of this philosophy, and his methodology is to pay people off to not complain.  When large corporations pollute the local environment at their plants by tainting water or fouling the air, he feels a monetary payoff should be enough to stop their vocal complaints.  It is of no consequence they do not possess the means to move or pay for health care for their resulting maladies.  This is the America in which we live, but not always has it been this way.  Major changes have transpired in America, and I have been thinking about them.  The first major assertion I have is the socioeconomic system of Capitalism has died.  I was trying to pinpoint its year of demise, and the most logical date is 2008.  It was the "Financial Crisis" of 2008, "The Big Short."  What was this phenomenon?  It began with Bill Clinton running for President with a campaign slogan consisting of, "Everyone should be able to own their on home."  Recently as we saw with Donald Trump, when a United States President feels strongly about something, the country climbs aboard.  More specifically core components of our economy, certain businesses, are liberated to exploit the President's desires.  In Bill Clinton's case, financial institutions abandoned traditional policies such as vetting of financial capability, and began handing out high interest loans with little culpability.  The real estate industry desperately wanted to sell these homes to Americans, all of them.  Despite whether they financially were capable of paying their mortgages each month for the duration of the loan, savings and loans and banks dolled out mortgages to anyone and everyone.  While realtors collected their fees, and financial institutions earned interest on their loans, Wall Street flourished with the Hedge Fund.  They pooled these high risk mortgages and sold them at great profit.  This is how recent wealth was accumulated on Wall Street, and it was extremely risky.  It was get rich quick.  Without the knowledge of potential home owners, these mortgages were written so that monthly payments down the line would escalate.  A few savvy Wall Street investors read these mortgages, and they were the only people that knew of the oncoming financial melt down.  In turn they created and invested in new financial instruments actually that bet on this collapse.  They bet against America.  The consequences of this bet predicated that Washington, DC bail out the rogue gamblers.  They lobbied George W. Bush, who created the Troubled Assets Relief Plan (TARP).  The federal government paid off these renegade Wall Street investments, because Hank Paulson declared we would have a second great depression, and we could not let Capitalism collapse.  Consequently the large corporations, instead of shoring up their own lost capital, paid great bonuses to their CEO's.  Not unlike much federal relief money, it was squandered.  My feeling is Bush should have let Wall Street sink.  From this time on most of America's money disappeared into overseas banks shielded from the IRS.  This practice has continued, and most of the huge corporate conglomerates continue to pay no federal income tax.  This cannot occur for Capitalism to function.  The combination of reckless investing and outsourcing manufacturing to much cheaper foreign labor markets has killed our American socioeconomic system.  With the flourishing of the World Wide Web and E Commerce, social media, and digital streaming of audio and video, America never will be the same.  Covid struck its own possibly more powerful blow to America's traditional work methodology.  Because manufacturing will not return to American soil in terms of tangible plants and product produced, and because technology (or more specifically internet) has become the vehicle of choice for commerce, for Capitalism to live in America the system must be rethought and revamped.  The Democrats actually have tried to do this, and Joe Biden's green energy plan isn't a bad idea.  What it is though, like Bernie Sander's free health care and college with a paid wage, is radical.  It is to abrupt a change for America on which to sign.  The transition of Capitalism has to be more subtle and gradual.  Suggesting the entire private health care system must sacrifice their profits for the greater good is a losing proposition.  Many people have grown rich from health care, and they are not about to forfeit these lifestyles.  What is most important is how to provide the middle class jobs America needs.  Not flipping burgers or stocking shelves at Walmart, Americans want and deserve better jobs, middle class jobs that once became important in the American Dream.  My second assertion is most unpalatable, and it is the grim realization that Covid was no accident.  It was a designed, engineered, and manufactured pathogen purposely unleashed on the world to kill off those draining the entitlement system in America.  Trump reiterated this concept time and time again.  He wanted to get rid of annoying immigrants, needy geriatrics, and incarcerated criminals.  He was very verbal about this desire.  More disturbingly this deluge of deadly pathogen still is being released.  The method of dispersion necessarily is by aircraft.  Fort Detrick, the military's base for biological defense in Maryland, is no stranger to biological weapons.  Simply they changed the name of the facility to "defense" rather than "weapons" to ease and cloak their palatability.  If one reflects on such things during the Viet Nam era with Agent Orange or the simple concept of crop dusting, it easily is understood that C130H aircraft used for aerial refueling easily could be modified to contain and release any airborne pathogen.  Paradoxically the military's aerial maneuvers have continued unabated during the Covid outbreak.  It is easy to disguise any aberrant flight with routine activity.  This is what the military do when we are not at war.  They train.  I would suggest finding out exactly what OTIS is up to.  

Rumsfeld Rides to Glory (or wherever)

Two amazing things happened today.  (In addition to my making from scratch an Indian cuisine-influenced lamb tikka dish with vegetables from our garden.)  My mother wanted grilled lamb chops, but with the temperature on the patio at 6:30 p.m. at 88 degrees, I opted to stir fry the lamp and make a carbon copy of my previous spaghetti sauce minus the ground beef.  (My supply of garam masala is almost depleted, so I need to toast some herbs, or rather smoke some herbs to get toasted)  Looks like medical weed may be in the works for North Carolina.  The demon Donald Rumsfeld left the building today, and I feel guilty for rejoicing in that man's death.  I am not sure he is in heaven with God, because...  The second watershed event which transpired today was some tough "Black Lives Matter" love at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  After the closed meeting which resulted in a life long secure professorship for Anna Nichol Smith, I mean Nikole Hannah-Jones, the assembled body of activists opted to give two members of the Board of Trustees an earful.  This it turns out was a scathing criticism of support for African-American students pointing out the reality that the university was built by black slave hands.  I don't know if that is true, but having attended UNC-Chapel Hill, I acutely am cognizant of and understand political and financial influence at my alma mater.  The heinous Athletic Scandal which transpired while my high school and college friend Holden Thorp was chancellor never will be forgotten.  Certainly it has changed my support of the university.  Obviously others feel the same about the rather sordid leadership on the Hill.  God gave us instincts for a reason, and although fully I didn't know the facts about UNC's leadership, with fervor that Southern racism and classism radiated from the perimeter of that place.  After four years I could not wait to get out, because I knew your opportunities were nil.  Unless you were a part of that coveted crowd, you would remain a peon.  Funny I have remained a peon despite having been to two other major universities.  It is because I never was interested in, nor knew how to play the political game.  I my entire life spiritually was indoctrinated to produce the best quality music I could.  That didn't include making boatloads of greenbacks.  Consequently I have sizable catalog of written and recorded music works, but they sit either on a shelf or in a file cabinet.  Jeff Lorber didn't receive his first Grammy until forty years after his watershed recordings of the Jeff Lorber Fusion.  Am I ahead of my time musically?  History will tell with the help of the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.  Each and every work ever I have composed or recorded accurately is recorded officially with this office.  The problem is with their digital conversion process (like the medical profession) they have grown inefficient and bulky.  In addition they charge hefty fees to search and retrieve specific copyright registrations, unless you happen to live in DC.  Then you can just walk into the library and search their card catalog.  With the passing of the demon Donald Rumsfeld and that vituperative discourse after the vote at Chapel Hill, abstractly I feel progress has been made.  Secretary Rumsfeld was a bad man, and when they figured him out on that Hill (Capital Hill, not Chapel Hill) he was given his walking papers.  For thirty-six years I have been waiting for this vindication at Chapel Hill.  I knew it was an Ivory Tower in the Ivy League, and I knew it was not the best system of education, but an education from Chapel Hill still was worth a lot.  I got screwed on the music education program, and happily the man who erroneously was hired to teach my "block" education courses also is deceased.  The irony here is that he was hired to fill the void of the previous Wind Ensemble director who was denied tenure.  Although I didn't know him directly, my sister was in his ensemble for a brief time when she was a Freshman at Chapel Hill.  This man played the tuba, spoke fluent German, and did a great job conducting this all wind ensemble.  Still they decided he was not adequate material to receive that life long position, which really means he doesn't fit in with the rest of them.  To play on the team, you have to be a team player.  The best of the best often are not interested.  Instead they forge their own path, or rather "March to the best of a distant drummer."  (that would be Miles Davis)  James Arrowood was not qualified to teach any education course.  He was a solid conductor, but that was it.  To be on the faculty of a major university, multiple skills are required.  Often you need to teach more than one discipline.  Once I used to tell myself I was such a person.  I do multiple things in the aesthetic of music, but in academia that is not the most important thing.  What is important is paper.  I wish it were "papers."  Being a polished politician is your best tool.  I can't remember my original thread, but I have one pound of less hair to weigh my head down.