The Loss of the American Voice

 Verbally I am constipated, but language flows like music.  It is driven by emotion.  Both can be articulated conservatively without passion, and the results can be effective.  Do they have the same effect,  cognitive versus affective?  I am a product of both processes, but using feeling as your impetus is challenging.  It can be dangerous, because when you expose affective activity, nefarious players may enter the game.  Life is a consistent battle warding off evil.  The conundrum of art or merely expressive communication is that it flourishes with feeling.  Feeling not always is available.  More so since the Trump presidency, the appearance of sincere feeling or appropriate sentiment has become a commodity and weapon of the Right.  It may be the most heinous breach of benevolence in our lifetimes.  It is this with which we are contending in our now struggling democracy.  In the search for goodness America has faltered.  Our Capital violently was attacked.  Our regulatory agencies have been compromised rendering our geography a mine field of lethal obstacles.  A deadly pathogen killed millions.  If one looks, it would appear foreign ownership of American interests has contributed to this decline.  What has made America great are our expressions of the American voice to which we have become deaf and blind.  History plays a vital role defining and reinforcing these attributes, and the recent misinformation campaign has dealt a stark blow to American consciousness.  Misinformation is "Newspeak," and the culprit is "Big Brother."  George Orwell's novel, "1984," predicts it perfectly.  Communist and fascist behaviors have infiltrated America.  Many won't recognize it, but it is a severe loss of personal freedom.  We may be free to go where please and speak our minds, but society ignores us.  We must submit to their rules and concepts.  This hierarchy is covert and subtle, but it is concrete.  It is similar to the politics of the social ladder, but now those controlling the purse strings are evil.  They are not benevolent.  There is good deep in the human soul, and it has been quashed since the 2016 Presidency.  Evil masquerades as good, and evil only can manifest itself in human form.  If our instincts become confused, we are vulnerable.  We must discard our feelings and adopt a streamlined cognitive plan to survive, leaving us empty.  That feeling or expression, that affective voice of America has suffered.  We don't ouselves, and it is because our creative and artistic voices have been muted.  Film, television, and music have been our blood vessels carrying the rich nutrients of humanity to America.  (and eventually abroad)  Covid hindered our creative efforts showing us an unsettling retrospective of the Dark Ages.  We have been reduced to surviving, and our souls are not quenched.  Taylor Swift is providing an invaluable service for America.  A decade ago pop stars, pop culture, and counter culture were mainstream in America.  A suffocating blanket of Trump has stifled America with a smelly, stodgy, anachronistic mindset.  The empowerment of the wealthy, government deregulation, and limiting of social programs to those in need were the key constructs of Ronald Reagan's premeditated presidential agenda.  He was run by a group of California elites with a specific national goal in mind.  Neoliberalism was the result, but it was called "Reaganomics."  As a counter to stagflation of the 1970's, the economic reforms of 1980's appeared productive to me as a young adult.  While often thought of us self-indulgent, I saw forty percent of the wealthy's income siphoned back into their businesses.  This policy created Donald Trump, because prior to Ronald Reagan the tax rate on the rich was above seventy percent.  The money of the affluent was funding the federal government and their war in Viet Nam.  Film, music, and fashion burgeoned in the 80's, and while costs may have been high to the consumer America flourished as an artistic and expressive body.  Do we want to see our blockbuster movies?  Do we want MTV?  Do we want interesting alternative music?  Do we want fashionable clothing?  Yes, and it is absent today.  We don't want to live in the trenches, where we have been since Covid.  For goodness to prevail, we must eliminate the scourge.  That scourge is Donald Trump. 

The "Red" Army

 To an average American it should seem surprising that pro-Palestine protesters erupted in Raleigh, North Carolina heckling Governor Roy Cooper.  What is the logic of this?  Palestinians are governed by Hamas, a terrorist group who savagely attacked Israel, murdered thousands including women and children, and took hostages.  For such a following to have the gall to assemble and protest in North Carolina should raise caution flags.  These are extremists.  Nancy Pelosi linked some of these dissidents to Russia, which is a logical deduction.  They are the same, Red, meaning Communist.  China, Russia, and Iran are Donald Trump's business partners.  Publicly he says he hates the Chinavirus, but he lies.  When elected president, Donald Trump quickly dismantled the Iran Nuclear Agreement carefully crafted by Barack Obama.  It allowed Iran to continue developing nuclear grade weapons shared by Red.  Red State.  MAGA.  Antifa.  Antifa is not anti-fascist.  They are an extreme militant group who enact fascist tendencies.  Red is the same color it has been since the Cold War. Donald Trump is the heart of it.  Red Heart, not Bleeding Heart  Commie Bastards.   

Fighting for Our Freedom

The newly-emerged but ancient conflict between Israel and Palestine was reignited by Donald Trump as a ploy to detract scrutiny from his ensuing legal battles.  It could be considered "Spin 101."  In politics the easiest and effective tactic is to create a diversion.  Suddenly the emphasis on his stolen documents cases has shifted. There are enough other cases to absorb the attention, and the gamble was lost.  Trump was ordered to pay eighty-three million dollars to a harassed woman for his bad behavior.  Stolen government documents stored at Mar-a-lago, of which he brazenly bragged, were the source of intelligence for the heinous attack on Israel.  How else could Hamas plan and articulate such a detailed two year attack on Israel?  He sold the intelligence, and he told you he was going to do it.  God was ready for the conflict, the attack on Jews, and it is nothing new.  Perhaps a raging holy war is appropriate to shore up our religious values.  This man is a stain on America, and the people are ready to regroup and move on.  The decision of SCOTUS will cement the political perspective of America for the next five years?  Do we want unrest, violence, division, and war, or do we want peace and civility?  If America is the country she has been, then the United States Supreme Court will not allow him to be on the ballot for inciting an insurrection.  If they do, then America has been reduced to a common third world nation.  The court is nothing more than an autocratic cast of Trump minions.  Is one man worth that sacrifice?  It is a battle between Communism and freedom, and Putin wants his U.S.S.R back.  Americans don't want to be Putin pawns, and we will fight to the death.  

A Sexual Impetus for Jass

Previously I was writing about jass.  The origins of jass are nebulous.  Professor Bill Messenger, the Baltimore-based jazz historian, pianist, and lecturer suggests that jazz is related to "chaise."  Americans know this French word as chase.  (or a long folding chair)  When the United States Navy shuttered Storyville in New Orleans at the onset of World War I, the musicians working there were forced to migrate up the Mississippi River on riverboats.  Some made it to Chicago as did Louis Armstrong.  The ongoing joke among black musicians was they would not to get off the boat in Memphis!  The reason is self-explanatory.  The Mississippi River was important disseminating jazz  north from the port of New Orleans.  Bix Beiderbecke remarked he first heard Louis Armstrong's trumpet wafting in the breeze as his riverboat sailed by.  St. Louis, MO and Kansas City, with their abundant cattle trade, were meccas for jazz, gambling, drinking, and the "Sporting Life."  Cattle and meat workers needed a place of relaxation and entertainment.  The United States government closed Storyville, because it was close to military bases.  It offered an unfavorable temptation to young recruits.  Because they were shipping off to war, the Pentagon didn't look favorably upon venereal disease.  After twenty years of legal prostitution, (1897-1917), Storyville was closed.  After "Satchmo" made it to Chicago and rejoined his old bandleader, Joe King Oliver, it was rumored that a drunk patron of a club stood up in the middle of a heated musical refrain and yelled, "Jass it up!"  The owners of the club seized on the phrase, and put it on the billboard outside.  It wasn't long before someone came by and scratched out the "j" leaving the word ass.  Quickly the "s" was changed to "z" and the word "Jazz" was born.  Because of its origins in the Sporting Life, the word jazz sometimes is equated with the the word jizz. (slang for semen)  Most agree a more appropriate term is preferred, such as African-American Classical Music (in the words of trumpeter Lee Morgan).  The most important question concerning American Jazz is whether it is tethered to these roots.  Is jazz music a metaphor for sexual activity?  Does it use sex as its impetus?  As a studied academic jazz musician and composer, I never felt this connection.  My introduction to recorded jazz was through Miles Davis.  The voice of Miles Davis through his trumpet was far from the intents of Early Jazz.  It could be called melancholic or even "Third Stream."  What Miles Davis was expressing through his horn were his experiences in American life, and unfortunately many of them stemmed from racism.  Often he decried that notion.  His father was an affluent dentist, but Miles' chosen path of jazz was pitted with the familiar ups and downs of any career.  These included heroin addiction, poverty, and oppression.  You can hear these travails in his jazz voice, but they are what make Miles Davis Miles Davis.  He was not Louis Armstrong or Dizzy Gillespie, and he was not keen to "Uncle Tom" for the audience.  He demanded to be appreciated for his own perspective.  Miles also grew and evolved in his career changing with the times.  Again the question arises, "Are the carnal characteristics of Early Jazz necessary for its existence?"  More importantly 

The Elements of Jass

When I worked as a professional pianist in the cruise industry, musical knowledge was slight.  There was no lack of ego, and most of the young musicians who thought they could play jazz in essence were just just covering up that they couldn't.  What is the big deal with jazz?  You really want to know?  Jazz - the quintessential American art form, but Bluegrass should be in there too.  The thing about jazz is it takes a long time to amass the skills necessary to play it.  Why?  The reasons are specific.  There is a lot to it, as there should be with any art form.  Lots of things to study and understand.  Can I be concise?  I'll try.  

1.  You need a stellar sound concept.  (you must be able to produce and sustain a beautiful, expressive, and in tune tone on your instrument)  You can learn this with classical training, BUT - the variety of sounds found in jazz run the gamut.  Sound concept is one exceptional and transformative element of jazz.  Early Jazz circa 1920 transformed the sounds of traditional European instruments.  These sounds got adapted to life in America, the New World.  America was a very different place than Europe, and consequently America needed her own music with its own expression and identity.  Jazz created and provided that.  

2.   You must be able to "Swing."  What the "F" is swing?  This remains unanswered today.  No one knows, and those who don't or can't swing spend their lives covering this up.  (like young cruise ship musicians)  Swing most succinctly is a feeling, so if you can't produce an emotion or emote when you play, give up.  It is necessary above all other things.  If you have a crappy sound, you still can be part of an ensemble providing rhythmic feel.  You play a "riff" maybe on one single note.  There are different concepts of swing, and I am familiar with most of them.  Listening to Dexter Gordon you will hear his concept of swing, and it requires playing in different parts of the beat.  You can lay back or play behind the beat, and you can play ahead of the best.  You can use swung 16th notes, 8th notes, or even triplets which are the easiest.  The Count Basie band uses both at the same time.  The rhythm section plays a tight shuffle feel and the horns play looser triplets on top of this beat.  Duke Ellington plays a specific swing feel on the piano, and you can see it as he plays, because he accentuates his arm movements.  Some of this was for sheer volume to be heard.  If you were playing with a Big Band with an un-miked piano, good luck being heard.  Glenn Miller had their own sense of swing as did Woody Herman and Stan Kenton.  Swing rhythm is subjective, BUT you can't swing without playing good time.  In short to swing you must be able to play time, in time, in many different tempos.  The "feel" of a tune is the result of a groove, time, being played at a certain tempo.  If you internalize that feeling, say a ballad and the emotion it conveys, it is easier to realize it.  Producing this emotion magically creates the time.  Discuss.  

 

3.  You must be able to improvise.  All ready we have three things most musicians can't do.  If you went to university and studied classical music, then maybe you can create a beautiful sound on your instrument.  Maybe you can play good time.  If you understand time and tempos, then you are ahead of the game.  If you know how to phrase you are advancing up the ladder of musicality.  That is not enough.  To play jazz you must know tunes by heart, and that means knowing the melody (how it sounds) and the accompanying chord changes.  Orchestral excerpts are not enough nor are studies.  You must have a repertoire from the Great American Songbook.  This is where most musicians fail.  It takes conscientious work.  You must go into the woodshed and "shed."  Charlie Parker practiced over twelve hours a day.  It is a bug you need to get.  Even after you know the song and the appropriate chord changes, you are not a jazz musician.  It may get you through a gig, and I would welcome anyone who could play the "heads" of a lot of songs.  To be called a jazz musician, the most paramount thing is:  You must be able to improvise a solo over the form of the tune.  This is the way it all started.  All of the Early Jazz, like the music of Jelly Roll Morton and Joe King Oliver sounds improvised.  Surprise!  It was all written down.  It was not improvised.  This blew my mind when I discovered this.  John Phillip Sousa was one of the most popular recorded musical artists as was Enrico Caruso.  Ragtime also was the popular music of the day.  There were skilled and educated musicians in America, and they came from academia and classical training.  A handful of them, including the Creoles from New Orleans, needed a new gig.  When Jim Crow laws were passed in the American South, educated Creole musicians lost their classical and opera jobs.  Many turned to jazz for income, and that is why Early Jazz was so virtuosic.  Jazz musicians like Louis Armstrong played in ensembles playing arrangements of American popular songs.  These arrangers, such as Paul Whiteman, Benny Moten, and Don Redman were instrumental in the birth of Early Jazz. It varied from geographical place to place in America, such as NOLA to St. Louis to Chicago.   Before Bill Basie became the band leader of Benny Moten's band, their repertoire was rife with ragtime, novelty tunes, and blues.  When Bix Beiderbecke and Satchmo took a chorus or improvised a second verse of an arrangement, this was the blueprint for improvised jazz to follow.  They would play the first chorus straight or as notated, but their second improvised chorus swung more freely and took liberties with the limited rhythm of the time.  They could bend notes, distort the time, and superimpose more complex lines over a simple song.  In the Big Band music that followed, swing music for the times of war, the improvised solos became a part of the arrangement.  The vocalists of swing, while they sowed their oats singing in time and harmony in a big band, later began to paraphrase the melody of a song.  Louis Armstrong may have been the originator of this practice.  It is a contentious issue to alter a composer's carefully printed notes, but in live performance on the road things evolved.  Musicians such as Louis Armstrong quickly became self-contained composers singing and playing tunes and inventing things on the spot to fit the audience.  This extemporaneous improvisation was exciting and entertaining and developed into what we know as jazz.  

That Which Goes Around, Comes Around

 Inexplicably on Sunday evening I was pulled into an undefinable funk.  After spending several weeks preparing for a cocktail piano gig, I was able to muscle my way through.  Nothing had changed, and all of the pitfalls I knew were coming were there.  My forethought minimized these hazards, but the long term implications of work sustained.  I conquered, and the gig was successful, but this event was a catalyst for repressed energy.  This is the plight of family.  You come from this familial heritage, so part of it is your own blood.  Often they say children come "through" their parents.  I have lived in my father's shadow my entire life.  As he aged this influence waned, but as a part of my own blood necessarily it always will be there.  When I first began playing piano I modeled after my father.  It was a good start.  When I went to college, especially graduate programs in other states, you grow in other directions.  The more you learn the more your playing changes.  You can't go home.  This is a deep statement, and what does it really mean?  I understand, but the chips fall where they fall.  To go to a gig and expect to be heard like my father is challenging.  His model is quality, and never could I replicate his playing style.  There was a reason for that, and I didn't discover it until recently.  His method of playing cocktail or jazz piano was based on a specific music theory called "Locked Hands."  Milt Bruckner was the originator of this style.  It widely was used by many keyboard purveyors including Hammond organists.  The technique was playing the melody in octaves with your right hand and filling in the harmony with your other inner fingers.  George Shearing played this way as did many jazz pianists who were known for a more sophisticated style.  Barry Harris was the most influential teacher of this method, and it began with using only one scale.  He would have you play up a major scale and harmonize I-V the whole way up.  What resulted in actuality was using a seven diminished seventh as a V for each I.  I think it is melodic minor.  Over the years as I looked at my father's miniaturized hand-written fake books, his chord "changes" or chord symbols were different than those used in the Berkley "Real Book."  They resembled the original chord notations from printed sheet music of the published songs.  As I perused these piano renditions of American popular songs, I began to understand that jazz notation or harmony was different than the harmony used by America's greatest popular song composers.  It was from a classical source, four part writing originating with J.S. Bach.  If you took Music Theory 101 in college, you will know what I am talking about.  Four part writing is a complicated thing.  You must begin from the beginning and learn it from the ground up.  "No parallel fifths."  Over the course of music history, Bach's strict four part writing evolved and changed, and these differing harmonic approaches defined the stylistic periods that came later.  The Baroque is an odd horse as is Renaissance music.  We like to believe what came later was more advanced, when in fact the roots of 20th century Expressionism can be found earlier.  The modulations I heard in Renaissance music are similar to what I hear in my own head.  I have devised my own harmonic system called "Multitonalism."  Pieces have no key signature and freely fluctuate between tonal centers or use modes as points of reference.  There are a lot of accidentals, because they are not found in a specific key signature.  The way my father played was sophisticated and required a deep understanding of the chord changes, the melody, and voice-leading between chord tones.  I could be called "learned."  George Shearing sounded the way he sounded, because he used this style.  So did my father, but I never knew it.  He wasn't "faking" a tune.  He was playing it the way he had learned with the specific chords he knew.  I choose to play more freely, and I change my approach often.  Always I have had the urge to explore this technique further.  Being expected to sound like someone else is difficult.  It is flattering in ways, but also it is a damp cloth over your flame.  Knowing when to be a whore is key.  It would seem in America we spend most of our time being whores for others, rather than seeking our own spark. 

Getting Gouged

It should be no surprise that the Insurrectionist Emeritus will wheedle his way onto the ballot for 2024.  Having planted more judges than any other president in history, he is calling for his due.  Will SCOTUS oblige and allow him to stay?  Until Trump is convicted for the insurrection on January 6th, there is hedge room.  The plan?  Delay.  Delay.  Delay.  His news coverage ebbs and flows.  He wins Iowa, and he is shining like the noon day sun.  It is a quintessential struggle between Left and Right.  It could not be possible to be more politically polarized in America.  They make everything political, because of Donald Trump.  "AI is producing all of the 'fake' media."  Since his Republic opponents are not appealing, it should not be surprising that the cult leader will work his way back in.  The question will be, "Is America gullible enough to put him back in office?"  To those who will vote for Donald Trump, it is not about logic, rational thought, or leadership ability.  It is a grudge match, and they hate the idea of Joe Biden and the Democrats.  So why are there so few candidates?  Where are the democratic contenders?  Evidently no one has the balls of Barack Obama to see a winnable opportunity.  Joe is getting old.  Trump is too old.  Where is the new blood?  The Presidential race reinforces my insistent depression from loss.  My mother is 92, and most of her friends have died.  My family is dwindling.  Familiar faces to me are fewer and fewer.  I have to reinforce my own sanity with visual stimuli, and that is iPhoto.  Why and how is it that there is not a younger generation poised to take the reins of America?  (the white noise outside is deafening)  Is it because of Robin Sage?  Is it freight trains hauling coal to the power plants?  CSX is making their money, and so is Duke energy.  Winter comes, and instead of discounting high demand periods of the day for energy, they raise the rates.  There is a forty percent premium increase on the books for Homeowner's insurance.  The commissioner is hedging saying it is the industry.  Forty percent?!  Not five percent.  Not fifteen.  Let's just gouge the American people, because we can.  

Spinning Out

Note to self:  Do not play too many syrupy ballads for your cocktail party.  They may be good music, but when people are drinking and talking, they may not be willing to revive the sentiments in "Beaches."  You need to keep it light and positive.  Allow the room to breathe.  My first cocktail party (my first gig ever) was at Highland Country Club in the "Back 9" club.  It was a rowdy group of socialites, who all ready were drunk by the time I began.  My Rhodes electric piano was set up in the middle of the room, and they were on all sides of me.  I was trying to read book arrangements of American popular tunes, while they were partying.  It was a rude awakening.  I could not hear myself, because the voices were so loud.  I'm sure they didn't care about my music.  All in all it was a horrible experience not unlike the other gigs my father sent me to substitute for him when he was absent.  He sent me to the Lion's Club in Southern Pines, and the piano was locked in another room.  They made me play their organ, and I didn't know how.  After a few minutes they told me I could go home.  They paid me, because I drove an hour each way to get there.  This is a slight foray  to my childhood, and it is unpleasant.  The lesson learned is:  Don't try to play music the people don't want or don't understand.  The only exception is:  If you are hired for a gig, and it is a cocktail party or dinner music, then you have the liberty of playing music that creates a relaxed and sophisticated mood.  Often because of the history of American popular music dating back to the turn of the century, this music necessarily will include romantic content.  Herein lies the grift.  America is at a historically non-sentimental juncture.  We are extreme, and in extreme scenarios it all is about the fight.  The Presidency of Donald Trump had zero content of American culture.  Culture is not business or economics.  It is humanistic behavior and sentiment.  Donald Trump is not a humanist, nor does he feign interest in artistic endeavors.  Bill Clinton played the saxophone.  Other Presidents patronized the Kennedy Center Honors, and hosted American artists at the White House.  Most attention to the Arts has been diverted, and American society is suffering.  How can we not be extreme, when there are no patterns or examples for cultured living?  The age of misinformation, corporate control of the internet, and decimation of the news leaves the American people ripe for control, extremism, and eventually fascist behavior.  Without education we are doomed.  During the Golden Age of Hollywood morality was ensconced in television content.  We learned from television shows, and their makers were virtuous.  As this generation dies out, there is nothing to replace it.  Patiently we are waiting for Millennials to grow consciences.  This won't happen without real world experiences.  When you lose your first job, your first love, or fail at something is when you grow a conscience.  It's when you realize you must love yourself, before you can love someone else.  There are times when I feel compelled to take off my rose-colored glasses and taste the tap water.  It is filled with bacteria, PFAS, and disease.  You should understand this, but you can't let it pull you into the ground.  You have to fight it.  Ignoring problems and ignorance is a formula for depression, because repressed feelings are a major cause.  You have to be strong enough to feel the pain but also strong enough to fight it.  Separating the two is the challenge.  I think it is important to be honest with your feelings.  To an extent we attempt to control our feelings with our minds, and it is necessary.  Also it is necessary to access our feelings as a litmus test for reality.  They act as a B.S filter, and the skilled interpretation of our feelings may become instinctual.  They may become instincts.  America is operating at a base level, because we have lost the connection with the example of the Arts.  If we allow ourselves to succumb to reality, and reality is dire, then we need a model or pattern for renewal.  It is a precarious balance, but it is necessary.   What are our patterns?  

Super PAC or Pac-Man?

 The predominant thought in my mind is, "How does a political candidate become a party nominee?"  Before I began to understand the relevance of this question, still I had the naive notion that anyone can run for political office.  That no longer is true.  Perhaps once it was in America, but our system of governance is infected with a virus.  This virus is evil, and evil means doing the right thing no longer is important.  With no system of values, moral or ethical, man is free to do whatever he wants in his quest for power and wealth.  What is forgotten is there is a God, and when you die you will be judged for your actions as a living human being on Earth.  Evil men like to purport they would rather live eternally in hell with Satan, because it beats heaven.  They like to gamble, steal, and sin in many ways, so they believe they are going to carry on this lifestyle in hell.  Wake up call!  The reality is hell is nothing like this.  In a glamorized or literary interpretation an author could depict hell this way, and it would be quite entertaining.  The truth is evil has consequences, and they are in the afterlife.  It won't be pleasant, and it will be for eternity.  Having said that and wondering, "How does one become a party nominee?", the gamut of the corruption of America surfaces.  We no longer are free, and it is because of economic oppression.  Money controls everything in America.  You could embark on a tour like NWA and travel the country performing Rap and Hip/Hop music to thousands of teenagers.  If you had a cementing message about American culture, opportunity, and economics they may listen.  As James Brown did you could tour with your band spreading your message.  To collect the money or the "house," it will take more effort.  This effort is a metaphor for "The Man."  I have written about the Man before, and always it is met with disdain and ridicule.  Those sucking the teat of the Man (like those stuck to Donald Trump's coattails) think it is their only financial option for survival.  This is what they want you to believe.  When I signed in to Youtube today, I got an ad with Donald Trump's voice telling me America is going to be attacked, and our food supply would be depleted.  It is the same message militia groups in the Midwest tout citing a doomsday scenario.  It could be nuclear holocaust.  This has been omnipresent in American minds since the Cold War.  It you choose to "Doomsday Prep" more power to you.  My realization isn't so much about future nuclear war as the loss of democracy.  When the political system is high jacked is when you loose your freedom.  In a nutshell control the candidates like puppets.  The era of virtuous people trying to do good for America is over.  It will die with John Kerry.  Doing the right thing now is scorned, persecuted, and punished.  Remember Jesus, the Savior of the world?  Antisemitism is a hatred not just of the Jews but of Jesus himself.  That realization is as stark to me as the wealthy elite controlling politics.  When you exude antisemitic attitudes you are forsaking Jesus Christ.  No wonder the spiritual power of Christmas has waned.  Jesus was a Jew.  It does not seem to matter to them, that He was the Savior of the world, an uneducated carpenter.  There is a message there, and it is the correct one.  Money and power do not create virtue.  Good is spiritual, and you partake of it and give it because it fulfills you.  This is what conscience is.  There is a part of you other than just the thinking brain, and it guides your decision-making.  It uses your emotional responses to influence your actions.  Instinct is the operative process, when you body tells you what is right.  When you emotional psyche is overrun with bullshit, it becomes more difficult to access.  The tools of evil to debilitate man are more tangible than ever, and they manifest themselves as airborne electricity.  What other way is there to manipulate the human psyche than to bombard its biological processes with B.S.?  Alpha, Beta, Theta.  12, 10, and 8 Hertz.  Pollute the air and the water and man becomes a docile grazing animal mindlessly searching for his next meal.  Donald Trump presents himself as your next savior, not unlike Adolph Hitler.  Beethoven discovered that truth. 

Precision Scheduled Military Imperialism

The first thought to come to mind when I sit down to blog, my laptop on my knees, and my feet slightly elevated is, "Why did I just get a blast of microdust and allergens in my eyes?"  Over the years we have upgraded our home with vinyl siding, double-pane gas-filled windows, and R-38 cellulose insulation in the attics.  It is the most energy efficient it ever has been.  The cost to heat and cool are nominal, and invasive urban noise from traffic and aircraft have been minimized.  No longer do I have to resort to earplugs when I sleep to mask the unwanted noise.  The unfortunate reality is low-flying aircraft are almost as dangerous to human health as heart disease.  This has been common knowledge, but with Donald Trump's emergence as a corrupt past President, the list of corporate and military grievances has lengthened.  Not their grievances, but their illegal behavior toward the United States citizenry.  Regulation was the first target of the GOP and the Insurrectionist Emeritus.  The corporate lobby has been chipping away at federal regulation for years, and the presence and efficacy of the EPA, FAA, FRA, and FCC has waned.  Scott Pruitt, a Texas attorney who made his career by suing the Environmental Protection Agency, was not the right choice to run this agency.  As was the Trump pattern with Louis Dejoy, the stooges he appointed did the opposite of their jobs.  They attempted to dismantle or hobble federal agencies to favor private competing corporations.  The pattern of corporate malfeasance, lobbying, and corruption is substantial, almost all major American companies have joined the campaign to eliminate any governmental oversight of their businesses.  Consequently we have the hottest year on record with no immediate change in sight.  The reason why I get a blast of microdust and allergens blown in my eyes, is because the Fayetteville Municipal Airport, Grannis Field, has no governing rules of flight.  Private, military, and commercial pilots run the airport.  They comprise the board, and because they want unbridled freedom in flying they do not restrict commercial flights in any way.  This not always was the case.  Commercial and private aircraft did not used to fly over downtown Fayetteville and Cross Creek Mall.  Now they do as they please, and the air pollution from plane emissions has risen dramatically.  Not only do I have black microdust all over our house, because they fly so low ignoring any common consideration of citizens living below, this noxious gas easily penetrates your home's HVAC protections and settles squarely in your sinus cavity.  I don't have to be standing outside when I plane flies over.  It blasts me in the face sitting inside, my laptop on my legs, and my feet slightly elevated.  Low flying commercial aircraft only is a small part of the onslaught in Cumberland Country.  There is a brand new railroad in town, and they want you to believe it is God's greatest contribution to the Fayetteville economy.  It is not.  If the Federal Railroad Administration decided to pay attention to the railroads, they would find the gamut of health violations.  Fayetteville is one of the few cities that gets hotter when the sun goes down.  That is because this is when CSX decides to run most of its trains.  With "Precision Scheduled Railroading" the common consensus is trains are longer.  They go slower, and they take longer to go by.  Now with Wabtec's "Locotrol," the crazy Mexican engineer driving a train while bombed on tequila, the infrasound, low frequency alternating current, and myriad of microwave radio signals controlling three spread out and separate prime movers, the traditional freight train now is a nightmare for everyone.  This is the new pattern of corporate behavior.  "Fuck the people.  We will do whatever we want to make more money." It goes further than that.  With the electing of the Insurrectionist Emeritus, attacking the people now is in vogue.  Don't like the results of the democratic election?  Attack the Capital.  Weaponization of the government is a gross misnomer, and it isn't true.  The real weaponization of America has been accomplished through corporate America, and every well known company that has served you for decades has signed on.  It is called ethnic cleansing, and they achieve it in full view through real life commerce.  Until regulatory agencies again begin to do their jobs, most of us will be dead. 

The Wealthy Don't Care

The inevitable truth is the Havana Syndrome, a seeming unknown malady that has garnered financial reparation before it has been explained.  Herein is the metaphor of America.  We keeps secrets, and we pay people off to keep these secrets.  The secrets merely are "The List," the Illuminati, the Free Masons, or the Bilderberg Conference, a contrived group of financially elite who consider themselves the autocrats of the world economy.  "The Families."  Perdue Pharma was a creation of such a family, The Sacklers, and ultimately they succumb to evil allowing vast expansive wealth to corrupt their once facile, creative, productive, and righteous souls.  Either through Trickle Down policies or poison that wicks its way up from the ground, The Sacklers were privy to a campaign that addicted millions of innocent citizens to their drug Oxycontin.  Thousands of them overdosed and died, just like the thousands who absorbed tainted ground water laced with Gen X produced as a by product of the manufacturing of Teflon.  DuPont felt it was not their responsibility to dispose of this waste instead releasing it into the watershed and the air.  This began in the 1960's, and they prefer to settle it a case at a time.  The original study took years to complete, but when it was finished the results were definitive.  Their refuse caused debilitating disease in humans and animals.  They continue to pollute today.  With the mysteriously emerging pandemic of Covid 19, Havana Syndrome also appeared.  It began after Barack Obama opened Cuba to tourist traffic from America.  When the cruise ships arrived in Havana Bay, Havana Syndrome emerged at the embassy.  Chinese scientists reverse engineered the audible sounds to ultrasonic aircraft noise, but as a recently Communist-ruled nation there was much interest in the future politics of Cuba.  It was discovered that the Russians had microwave surveillance aimed at consulates and embassies.  Six years later after 5G clawed its way out of the dirt, the government workers and dignitaries began developing brain damage.  President Biden felt so strongly about the well being of federal workers, they created a fund for sufferers of Havana Syndrome.  We still do not know what it is, but you can get paid if you have it.  Many employees felt there was a cover up in Pentagon.  This is common.  While the term "Spaghetti Bowl" is applied to America's antiquated and helter skelter railroad trackage, it might better explain the milieu of electromagnetic waves frying the Earth.  A known antisemitic entrepreneur has launched thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit, and we do not know what they do.  They are purported to provide high speed internet to those in need including the fighting army of Ukraine.  If you want a clear definition of the loss of American democracy, it is allowing "The Families" to do whatever they want, which they all ready do.  "Let's dump our waste in the peoples' water supply.  Let's fly our commercial jets over peoples' neighborhoods.  Let's turn three mile freight trains into ambulant power generating plants, but the power doesn't benefit you."  We live in the refuse of the rich, it harms us, and they don't care.  

Uncle Tom, Little Black Sambo, and Mammy

 I have been  in a complete musical funk for over a month.  The importance of music for me has waned to a minuscule level, because absolutely none of my musical sensibilities or abilities are reinforced in my immediate environment.  There is music in abundance in the community, but you have to seek it out.  It is in third party institutions, so you must go to these places.  When you attend church it is not long before they ask you for an offering.  You get what you pay for in American society.  I opted to get rid of cable television, and I don't regret it.  What was being offered as usual programming became trite, commercial, and eventually coercive.  Television is propaganda.  While I am happy that there is free TV over the air, and I usually can find something distracting to watch, the format of these networks has succumbed to the same low level of selling soap.  Yes, they need to earn revenue to support their broadcast, but regulation of the advertising on television is non existent.  There are few products being offered that would appeal to any sane human being.  The ad's are aimed at seniors who suffer from dementia.  They are full of false information and blatant lies.  It is offensive to watch these commercials, and it incenses me because the FCC is doing nothing to protect the American consumer.  Federal agencies have become nothing more than shell companies comping their own people.  The corporate lobby has done its job, and before long America will spiral into oblivion.  The rich are so rich they no longer need average Americans, and evidently they really want the real estate.  We are being assaulted on all fronts through the food system, in medical care, and in civil rights.  Our opportunities, while the job market may be rich, are limited.  The potential for social mobility is scant.  It is a hugely depressing landscape, the left over trappings of a violent coup attempt.  I would like to compliment the Washington Post for their expose of the hardliners who continue to run for public office.  The caricatures of these Trump-supporting bandits are vivid, inciting, and telling.  As Americans we feign civility and intelligence, but this insurrection merits tenacious resistance by all.  There is no option other than to see evil for what it is.  These people are trying to kill us, and Covid was a part of it.  The landscape is depressing, because underneath our mustered optimism of hope the reality is our American freedoms gravely have been threatened.  The American way of life is under threat.  It is difficult to return to our former lifestyles, because they are in question.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness have been replaced with slave labor, oppression, and the Stockholm Syndrome.  I never had heard of this malady, but it represents the faux relationship slaves have with their masters.  To make the best of their situations and not live in utter despair and darkness, they choose to fabricate a positive attitude about their situations.  At this time I would like to interject an opinion about racism based in the practice of Blackface.  I have watched many documentaries on the practice of Blackface and its accompanying stereotypes.  If you are a millennial, then you could not have an accurate opinion.  You have not lived long enough to have seen or experienced true racial diversity.  Those of us who are a bit older have seen more in our lifetimes.  When I watch the entertainments created through animation, or see the seeming racist images of the Blackface era, I am not offended by the images.  Why?  It is because I have seen these images first hand in real life.  The so called stereotypes, the Black Sambo, the Uncle Tom, or the Mammy were real depictions of black slaves working on southern plantations.  I don't find them offensive at all, because they real.  Cancel Culture would dispute this, but if you viewed factual footage from that era plainly you would see black people who look this way.  Especially in the musical genre of the Blues and in Black Church, these depictions were accurate.  To say that they were or are disparaging is a value judgement made by someone too naive to understand the brutality of American history.  Of course this history is not just limited to the newly burgeoning country of North America.  Slavery was rife all over the world, and perhaps America escaped the worst of it.  If you asked any of the slain soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary or Civil Wars, they would attest to the reality of a musket ball in the chest.  In the case of Stockholm Syndrome, this is what slaves did to create Christian and civil lifestyles in the midst of great persecution.  These exaggerated characters such as Zip Coon were based on real people.  The plight of these freed but still oppressed slaves was so grievous and dire, it showed in their faces, bodies, and clothing.  It was not a fabrication, and when the Minstrel Follies began using these characters as entertainment by utilizing Blackface, it necessarily wasn't meant as personal assaults on these individuals.  Their likenesses were so foreign and strange to American whites, they created their on mystique.  It is true some publishers exploited these images and used them as inciting propaganda, which fueled a race war against Blacks.  The people responsible for such depictions and their negative implications are the same people that continue to support Donald Trump.  The blood has remained, and that purely evil desire to oppress others for your own amusement remains.  It can be described or depicted as nothing else.  When I write about Jim Crow Jr., the millennials will continue to deny reality, because they never have seen it.  For this reason American history should sustain unpleasantries and all.  Cancel Culture and its companion "Woke" are created devices to separate the people of America.  We have Donald Trump to thank for that. 

The Hypocritical Bible Belt South

 As an example for progressive living, the Confederacy does not apply.  As an indigenous geographical destination, a place that hangs and beats freed slaves for sport cannot be considered progressive.  While over a century has passed the blood that courses through the veins of Red State Southerners hasn't changed.  They still believe Donald Trump should be President.  As a measure of progress or just plain literacy, this sentiment seals the fate of the American South.  It is primitive.  You better not sleep with your neighbor's daughter, because she is reserved for the immediate family.  The genealogical results of inbreeding are evident in the South.  What is more alarming is that the North Carolina General Assembly can't see past their own property lines.  Tim Moore resigned under the shadow of a settled extramarital affair, and Phil Berger continues to cement North Carolina legislation with gerrymandering, limiting the Governor's power, and quietly supporting a criminal ex-President.  Red is alive and well in North Carolina, and it remains the red in redneck.  The education lottery continues to fill the coffers of Raleigh's electorate, while schools and teachers attempt to remain solvent in near poverty.  Meanwhile air pollution in Cumberland Country threatens to choke the life out of everyone.  It is a matter of national defense Ground Forces Command would say.  Or is it those Generals traveling to Georgia and DC in those polluting charter jets?  What's in Georgia?  You can answer that question for yourself.  That Fire and Brimstone rhetoric was just a way to scare folks into submission, and Televangelism is no different.  Instead of shoring up local infrastructure by protecting the environment and conserving resources, Raleigh whores out North Carolina to the next convenient company with tax incentives.  (like revenue is going to save a burning and choking planet)  We embrace human trafficking, drug abuse, and violent crime because we are too hypocritical to offer the things people really need.  We could learn a lesson or two from other nations who have been around longer.  Need some loving?  It is not unusual.  It is not a sin.  It is a natural human trait that makes us human.  Without sexual desire life would be mostly what it is today, an angry, vindictive, plea for recognition.  If you wanted companionship, perhaps you should start with love or friendship.  The angry declaration that you are not a woman or a man is pointless, and society shouldn't have to deal with you.  You must deal with yourself.  You can't love someone else until you love yourself.  Need some loving?  What is the world's oldest profession?  No one would scorn you, except those who won't get your dollar.  They want it all for themselves.  Best to keep the natives restless and hungry.  If you gave them what they wanted, they might become content and well adjusted enough to offer a substantial contribution to society.  We can't have that.  We must keep tearing America into pieces under the auspices of the supreme autocrat and dictator emeritus.  The problem is he only is a dictator in his dreams, and staining America's blue dress with his vile semen wreaks to high heaven.  America is tired of smelling it everyday for breakfast. 

American Famine

 Most of the time I don't regret being a musician.  When push comes to shove I resort to music to regain my sanity, reset my ideals, and express my thoughts and feelings about a declining America.  Lately the overt emotion is grief for the loss of just about everything.  America's music industry, once a driving force in our domestic economy, has been castrated by Napster, Apple, and Youtube.  While the network of file sharing created by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker quickly was shut down for multiple copyright infringements, Steve Jobs used his business and personal savvy to court lucrative agreements for music distribution through his newly created iTunes online store.  Digital music distribution through the internet has hobbled America's once thriving music industry.  Like other corporate monopolies in America who stifle competition, also they cherry pick the revenue for themselves doling out minuscule royalty payments to writers and performers.  At the onset of 2024 the reality of a professional, wage-earning, musical performing artist is a fantasy pitched on any of the evening television talent shows.  These shows, along with Reality TV as a genre, have undermined professional artist opportunities.  Consequently what now is offered as "content" is inexpensive, shallow, and disposable fodder polluting the minds of everyone.  Before internet distribution music, television, and film aspired to higher ideals, because mainstream society would not accept less.  Today we have no choice, and this inane content has become poisonous, manipulative, and vituperative.  It has become propaganda.  The morality tales of yore have long passed, and the oft predicted age of Grift has arrived.  It is a modern American Dark Ages.  Being a musician, a thoughtful, caring, contemplative artist who is concerned with the health of humanity is not in vogue.  It is not wanted.  Music of this caliber is a distraction.  The Trump Era has made it the enemy not unlike the Third Reich.  Music that explores, embraces, and enhances the human spirit and its capabilities now is evil instead of good.  Herein is the plight of the persecuted Jesus.  For believing in and supporting Jesus Christ, you will become persecuted.  While I know and understand these things, it is easier to become mute.  The burden of carrying the weight of society's morality is unusually heavy.  There comes a time when your well becomes depleted, and you must turn to your community and environment for inspiration.  One particular situation in American culture has become troublesome, and it is the infusion to the point of exclusion of LGBT tendencies in theater.  It is not possible to frequent a local theater show without being confronted with the LGBT agenda.  They have chosen theater as their club, and the traditions and ideals of American musical theater have been lost.  This is because the male female romantic relationship upon which was based most story lines now is passe.  It seems unobtainable, because America has changed so much in the last two decades.  We have reached such a point of doubt, malice, and vengeance, to support such a relationship seems naive and absurd.  In reality it is the LGBT movement that has undermined this concept replacing it instead with campy drag depictions of satirical vitriol.  The once sacrosanct, eternal, and God-sanctioned sacrament of heterosexual love has been rejected.  Good luck trying to resurrect this dinosaur.  Existing only in the hypothetical isn't healthy, and the rose-colored glasses will cause your eventual demise.  One must acknowledge and confront reality to some degree.  Wearing the necessary sentiments on your sleeve for artistic expression exposes your most tender flanks, and the wolves are hungry.  Believe me, there is nothing to eat. 

American Ethnic Cleansing

I was rummaging through my folder of captured videos, and I happened upon the Wabtec Locotrol promotional advertisement.  Current corporate and Wall Street practice is to keep selling companies and changing their names.  When GE gets too much heat for a jet turbine explosion killing an airline passenger, they sell off the subsidiary company to divert negative attention.  GM and GE are the major providers of locomotives in the rail industry.  Only recently has a new company emerged with a retooled and more progressive model of traction.  Corporate monopolies have kept control in America for a long time stifling competition.  Create a new company name, promote it with shiny images and positive words, and cover up any potential dangers they may contribute to life on earth.  AC traction, while favorable and an improvement for freight rail, is a major contributor to the decline of modern civilization.  While I don't enjoy the knock of a turbo-charged, two stroke, diesel prime mover in Notch 8 (SD-40/GP-38) what I enjoy less is the ridiculous amount of radiation emanating from the roof of an ES-44ACH.  I have the study sitting on my desk from the company who tried to assess the adverse consequences of radio intermodulation of a modern freight locomotive.  The electricity or EMF's flowing out of the multiple antenna arrays was so great they could not begin to discern what was what.  All of it was at such high energy levels no peripheral commercial radio signal would have much of an effect.  Wabtec is a spin off rail company, and evidently "Locotrol" is their baby.  If you are aware of excessive rail activity, its infrasonic offerings and electrical refuse, then this Webtec promotional video is for you.  Everything they promote as positive for the operators has a direct opposite adverse effect on human health.  Longer trains.  This argument has continued for years, and when a three mile long train stops to change crews or switch cars, you shouldn't have a heart attack.  The ambulance will not be able to get to you, because of the blocked grade crossings.  They sit with impunity suggesting that the profit of the few usurp the needs of the masses.  "Wouldn't you have to kill one baby, for that much corporate profit?"   Locotrol transforms 4400 horse power diesel/electric freight locomotives into toy trains controlled with a remote not dissimilar from a drone, gaming console, or model airplane.  In terms of risk management and the record of the freight rail industry (East Palestine, OH and others) relinquishing manual hands on control of thousands of tons of moving freight is ludicrous.  The wireless communication protocol allows the railroads to eliminate crews on mid and rear locomotives.  To clincher is what I saw today on the Wabtec video.  Remote control switching of road motive power in the hump yards eliminates the need for low HP switching engines.  When an AC traction locomotive operates at slow speeds, the IGBT is producing alternating current at very low frequencies akin to the speed of the traction motors and wheels.  The way AC traction works is, and only why it has become accessible to railroads, is because to control the speed of the AC drive, computer-controlled electrical processing must produce alternating current at the appropriate frequency.  The frequency of the AC is the speed of the motor.  When a heavy haul road locomotive "switches" in the hump yard, it constantly is operating in the low frequency mode producing alternating current below 60 cycles continually.  Low frequency alternating current in huge quantities and rotating electromagnetic fields in the stators of AC traction motors are not friendly to human health.  We would not know because no studies have been done.  The FRA is a boys club of rail industry executives, and the smile and say, "Yes."  It is likely the sensory receivers of an artist, specifically a musician, are more tuned to such airborne activity.  Before the PC and its ability to control AC drives with an insulated gate bipolar transistor, and before the plague of cellular communications, satellite TV and NASA communications were not conspicuous.  Today we live in a berserk, uncontrolled, Wild West of aberrant airborne electricity, and most would agree it is taking its toll on the human vessel.  If there were one thing that could alter your emotions and thinking, simple electrical impulses mostly in the low frequency range, it would be an AC locomotive operating in a hump yard.  At 3:30 a.m. when I am rousted from sleep in a standing wave of heat and electricity produced by such a freight train, torture is the only thing that comes to mind.  To think once I used to build model trains with a sentimental temperament.  Like music the extreme radical right has weaponized sanguine American cultural traditions and turned our nation against us.  In Third World countries it is called ethnic cleansing.