The Missing Arts in American Society

 I wear gas permeable hard contact lenses.  They are a vast improvement over the PMMA lenses I received at Duke University Eye Clinic in the early 1980's for Keratoconus.  I am thankful for hard contact lenses, because they are the only solution for the eye disease Keratoconus.  Even after keratoplasty in both eyes (cornea transplants) I have corrected vision of 20/20.  My saga of flying contact lenses continues, and today was no different.  First as I attempted to extract my left lens from its case, it hid from me falling over backwards stuck between the edge of the case and the bathroom countertop.  For a minute I couldn't find it, but when I did feel it with my fingers and attempted to free it from its sticky nest, it decided to commit suicide and broke in half destroying itself.  Innately I new these lenses had made it past their half life.  It was not a huge surprise, but it was yet another inconvenience.  I had one spare left, but it was sitting dried out in its open case.  It took over an hour to finally coax it to settle on my left cornea and attempt to improve my legally blind vision without contact lens correction.  Secondly it felt like a huge dirty diaper in my eye.  My vision was blurred and it felt terrible like it was about to tiddly wink out at any moment.  It stayed in for a few minutes, but as soon as I started to do something productive in the house (rearrange some furniture) it popped out.  I heard it "dink" on my hardwood floor.  I tried not to panic or delve into a chronic depressive state.  Somehow the Creator had mercy on my now weeping eyes, and I placed my finger right on the bit of shiny plastic nestled next to the rocker on my Great Uncle Edwin's chair.  I reflected that these are gas permeable lenses and thus are meant to stay moist.  It had been sitting in a dry container, so I mused that I was to blame for not taking more time to clean and soak the lens before inserting it.  I did so, and it has stayed put so far.  I finished my furniture arranging long enough to realize that age 63 and after Covid repeatedly has racked my body, I no longer was capable of holding a full time job.  I have arthritis on the right side of my body, and recently it has worsened running from my right shoulder down my arm and into my piano playing fingers.  I take a lot of over-the-counter NSAIDs.  If I do not, I am in constant pain.  I have become a "Man of Constant Sorrow," but mentally and spiritually I am not depressed.  My environment does everything in its power to exert depression on me, but I resist.  Music is my salvation, and often I am denied it.  How and why am I denied music, and why would music seem so important?  As a true musician, a real musician, not a poser, or a talker, or a grandstander, but one who has committed to the vocation and art of musical expression, composition, and performance, music becomes part of your soul.  I feel most of us have some music in as at birth, and this has inspired both the Kodaly and Suzuki methods of early music education.  In these methods it is crucial to establish a connection with and understanding of the God's given gift of rhythm, melody, and eventually harmony.  Often it begins with just rhythm, because singing or actualizing pitch or melody is not necessary.  If it comes right down to it, the basic fundamental requirement for music is time.  While the concept of time as an organization of subdivisions of an established pulse or beat has evolved over time, and that development and abstraction can be heard in Jazz's Avant-garde and Classical's Abstract Expressionism or Second Viennese School, the feeling of a pulse, a steady hearbeat-like continuance also becomes synonymous with an emotional feeling.  The tempo of that pulse directly can influence these emotions in an almost crude and primitive way.  Major tonality often is deemed happy and minor sad.  A slow pulse or ballad usually equates to a feeling that is reflective, relaxing, or romantic.  These characterizations are subjective, but throughout history they have remained constant.  Fast paced music or a quick tempo takes more of a certain kind of energy.  The best example could be America's "Rock and Roll," which like every other tenant of music is a study of and unto itself.  I feel this sexualized, physically aggressive, and sometimes euphoric blues-based American popular music represents the impact of time on the human psyche, soul, and libido.  It is called "Groove."  Many will disagree, including Igor Stravinsky, that emotion and music are the same or entangled.  I have found increasingly over time that great musical artists often talk shit or reinforce false or erroneous concepts and ideas.  It is an interesting paradox that a composer as great as Stravinsky, who penned The Firebird, rife with emotional content, would say such a thing.  The same is true of Miles Davis, who touted his genetic lineage as the son of a prominent oral surgeon.  Specifically he said that he never suffered nor had the blues.  There could be no greater contradiction knowing full well that the bulk of Miles' musical output was the direct expression of his own ideas and feelings.  Much of it was pensive and melancholic.  Don't listen to your artists talk.  Listen to them play.  Music, if good, necessarily is intertwined with your soul.  I have discovered upon studying classical music (or more succinctly European orchestral and chamber music), which made its way across the pond, fused with other disparate nationalities, and became its own offering, that this music equally is representative of the human condition as newer American musics including Appalachian Roots Music, the Blues, Bluegrass, Gospel, and Jazz.  We are more familiar with these because they are closer to us.  I have enjoyed listening to the almost local classical radio station, WCPE, and learning from it.  My classical CD collection was stoked by program material on this completely privately funded FM radio station in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  It is unfortunate that even with a dedicated translator on Bragg Boulevard in Fayetteville, Fort Bragg and CSX both assault this signal making it pleasing only about 80% of the time.  Upon scrutiny the roof of a diesel/electric heavy haul AC traction locomotive has every conceivable form of wireless communication including cell and WiFi frequencies.  When studied the antenna arrays built by GE were so complex with cross modulation, no results could be discerned.  They were a mish mash of EMF pollution.  Both FM and AM radio and over-the-air television have been sacrificed in lieu of the omnipotent Wireless Internet promulgated by Elon Musk and his Star Link satellite network.  In retrospect the original offerings of radio and television in America were and still are better.  Radio in particular before television evolved connected the nation, and disseminated American Popular Music to the masses, included extremely rural disconnected areas.   Early radio was a rich stew of musics which were meant to provide fulfillment to tattered American souls.  This included Southern preaching, the Blues, Country, and Swing.  The validity of music in the formation of America is strong and important.  It was out voice, and now we have none.  We are being told to what to listen, and this advice is coming from foreign streaming companies who have no place in the music industry.  Big Tech has hijacked American Popular Music for its own gain.  Film, television, and music, all huge components of America's economy, have been neutered.  The outbreak of Covid was nails in their coffins.  It is difficult not to realize the core constructs of American society have been attacked and are a shadow of their former selves.  While inclusive Real TV and social media have had their say, professional industries which provided opportunity, monetary reward, and viable united cultural expression are missing.  The reason it is so difficult for me to pursue the vocation and art of music, is because now it largely is missing in American society.  A few symphony concerts a year is not enough.