Too Many "Bad Vibrations."

The film "Memento" starring Guy Pierce is a stone's throw from how I feel.  Everything once that was familiar to me now is lost.  For a time I groveled in familiarity selfishly indulging in small sentiments that came and went.  Then I realized there was no point. I have absolutely no one with which to share any of them.  Almost each and every sentiment which moves my emotions is vacuous. Absolutely I have no one around me that seems to even acknowledge there could be a small thread of connectivity between them and me.  I have rationalized that this is what America has become, or rather this is what America always has been.  We are capitalist.  Capitalism is a socioeconomic system, but once in American history it coexisted with morality.  Capitalism could not possibly teach morality, so our morality in America comes from another place.  Once it came from church and family.  Organized religion like other American ideals has faltered.  At the hands of immoral people, the constructs that created our American morality became themselves examples of immorality.  We have spiraled downward into evil, and the one Thing that offers us salvation also has become an example of contempt and hypocrisy.  Who could believe in God?  What Being possibly could do what the Bible says God does?  Is not man the omnipotent with our money and technology?  It is a shite state of affairs, and I have found myself surrounded by absolute and complete anarchy.  The philosophies I have learned that have kept me honest and pure are no longer.  Truly it is like being Leonard Shelby each day when I wake.  The comfort of multiple college degrees and study no longer are relevant.  I have grown too old to remember how I once perceived my own vocation.  I could not care less about music.  We went to see "Ain't Misbehavin," the Fats Waller musical on Thursday evening.  While I had seen it before in downtown Charleston at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, seeing this again in my current environment only increased the anxiety I feel from my unfamiliar surroundings.  I enjoyed the show, but I only could ask myself how anyone today could relate to such a story.  A musical Renaissance in Harlem in the l920's?  Let me assure you I have studied the recorded lineage of jazz music.  I am quite familiar with most of the jazz styles, and ironically the pianist and entertainer Fats Waller is once of my favorite so-called jazz artists.  I am learning new things.  I have learned to things in the last week from seeing theatre offerings locally.  I learned that "jazz" or black music really was African-Americans trying their best at living in America.  I also learned that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was living in the wrong city for his own prosperity.  Watching actors Jitterbug and Lindy Hop across the stage while singing jazz music was startling to me, because rarely would we ever see such an image in modern day America.  While I personally have researched some of the short films of the jazz age and enjoy them immensely because of their dance education, I cannot fathom how Americans today would react to seeing such a thing.  Slowly the distance I have grown from the jazz age is becoming synonymous with the distance I have lived from the Classical Era.  It does not connect, because our socioeconomic system does not recognize it.  America does not recognize or support her own cultural heritage.  I feel much more comfortable listening to Bluegrass music.  With fifty percent Scotch-Irish blood in my veins, the sentiment in Bluegrass is familiar.  Oh my God.  I have discovered something.  Bluegrass is familiar to me, although I never have studied or performed it.  I understand its social message and it still is relevant in America today.  Is the message of jazz still relevant?  What was unfamiliar to me in "Ain't Misbehavin" was the concept of heterosexual romance.  For some reason in my years of study of American jazz music, never have I felt a connection of it to romance.  Wynton Marsalis has said that if you are not dealing with the love of a woman or God in your music, then it won't mean much.  Is this true?  Certainly the Great America Songbook is an example of this. I have come to love the biographical film "It's Delovely" depicting the life and musical career of Cole Porter and his wife.  Truly I feel whether true or not that through his eyes alone is how you come to understand his music.  I like many other college students have played jazz tunes from chord changes written in the "Real Book," the most common and readily available fake book for jazz music.  Starkly thirty years later I have learned that I have been shit off the mark.  I have been miseducated.  All of the courses and ensemble in which I have played jazz music do not scratch the surface of the real meaning of America's jazz.  "It's DeLovely" does.  It is a monument to American music, and each and every music student in the world today should be required to watch this film.  What is so telling about it?  It is telling, because it is one of the few treatises the world has today exemplifying the art of song composition.  Song writing is a natural organic process that accomplishes many  goals.  It should be said to all of the anti-God naysayers that song writing is the attempt of the human being to express themselves through music.  A person must have "something to say" in order to write a song.  Why is it that personal expression has become taboo in America today?  In fact most of the tried and true cultural constructs by which we have lived and thrived now are defunct.  We are a shell of a nation.  Only it can be at the evil hand of right wing extremists.  Extreme Muslims ranting at America's former privilege and artisty must be responsible for the quelling of our once creative voice.  I know that I do not feel comfortable playing jazz music anymore, because the sole purpose of it was personal expression of a positive nature.  I as the soloist I possessed the  right and privilege to speak my mind, voice my thoughts, and bare my emotional soul in music.  I do not feel comfortable doing this today, because this faction of the world has made art the enemy.  The things once that provided enlightenment and evolution to the human race now are evil.  It has happened before.  Ray Bradbury, in his film Fahrenheit 451, predicted a dystopian society of the future who saw books as a threat to the well being of human beings.  Dystopian is the perfect world, because dystopian is how I see America today.  There is little good.  Conversely when I was working on cruise ships, I saw little of this in any of the places we visited.  All of the destinations were positive artistic populaces of progressive people.  What has happened to America?  I always have lived in such a way as to embrace reality.  One must live currently, because how else can we survive?  One cannot live in a dream.  One cannot live in a storybook, and yet that that is the dilemma with which I am faced each day when I wake.  I know there is is absolutely no way any adolescent of today would understand the music of Fats Waller.  I know even further that the majority of Americans today as adults cannot understand or appreciate jazz music.  Often it has been said that intellect is not necessary when enjoying jazz music. There is a simple reason for that, but one that has become disguised also with the right wing assault on America's cultural heritage.  It best can be conveyed also with a film.  Recently I had the pleasure of watching Jamie Foxx's performance as Ray Charles in the movie "Ray."  While I have respected this legend with my knowledge of jazz music, it was not until seeing this film that it made sense.  Ray Charles's major offering to American music was with feeling.  His brand of Rhythm and Blues literally made you feel good.  Not only were you hearing polished expressive songs, they possessed an emotional feeling which overtly was pleasurable.  Is this possible today?  Do we in modern American even realize or recognize what a "good vibe" is?  It used to be the sole determinent of success in the entertainment industry.  Today it is lost.  Americans scurry to smoke marijuana to create this once readily available anodyne.  What happened?  It is simple.  Vibration whether electrical or emotional comes in waves of varying frequencies.  They can travel through the air passing between physical bodies and infecting others.  These waves often can be considered instincts, because they often are triggered subconsciously.  This "mojo" has been the secret of human pleasure since the beginning of time, and it is gone.  Modern industry has shit a major dump on the pristine canvas of American life, and they never looked back.  Whether it is coal ash, infrasound, or microwave radiation believe me that those running the world have not one ounce of sympathy or help for our flailing existence.  Effectively they have eradicated God from our consciousness and they have let evil proliferate beyond measure.  It is in this construct we are doomed to live the rest of our lives.  

Male Strippers

Recently a friend of mine posted to Facebook a video showing stationary exercise bicycles specifically placed in a public square.  Upon pedaling the machines a neon-like video show ensued creating a male stripper gyrating sexually in front of the machines.  The women seemed to go bizerk.  Without reservation they crawl aboard the machines and begin pedaling feverishly fueling the male burlesque image.  While the flash mob building projection may have been effective selling French mineral water, I question the women's response.  How can such a private sexual response be triggered so quickly and effectively in public?  Why and how would pedestrians bite so easily on a wormed hook?  Even if the sheer novelty, entertainment, and surprise lured the onlookers in, why would women so effortlessly abandon their manners and succumb to such a low brow enticement?  Is this representative of all women?  Do all women in the dark corners of Chippendale clubs suddenly lose all composure and offer their bodies to hunky gigilos?  It is uncanny to me.  I don't believe men would react like this.  We have been so brainwashed that heterosexuality today is bad, no one would dare acknowledge that somehow their bodily chemistry is wired for such a thing.  That's the way I feel.  American society truly has changed, and homosexuality is a part of it.  Because heterosexual have failed to such great lengths does not mean that suddenly the human race has mutated.  Then again as I look at images of my favorite movies stars, I see remarkable transformations to their physical appearances.  I believe we are in an age where electromagnetic energy is so strong in our environment it is impossible to discern the difference between normal biological evolution and cancers.  Too many things are awry.  The heating of the planet, which is easy, is one.  A letter to the Iranian government from Republican legislators is another one. What is happening?  My question is how men would be accountable for such a reaction in public.  Would the viewing public find it so entertaining to see men honestly responding to a female burlesque performer in public?  Of course not.  It would be scorned, and men would be accused of being sexist.  This fight of so called equality has been going on for decades, and it is hypocritical.  I resent it that I am not allowed to show my interest and appreciation for women and the female anatomy lest being deemed sexist.  I must do it privately.  This is not how America once was.  Once the heterosexual bond between a man and a woman was the sole foundation of society.  Could it be our devolution of conscious and sensibility is somehow linked to this newly discovered movement of homosexuality?  Rather have traditional homosexuals hidden all of these years only to attempt to emerge now for some reason?  I don't understand all of it.  I respect our president's agenda for peace with Cuba, nuclear agreement with Iran, and penalizing American businesses for fraud.  It is unprecedented what Attorney General Eric Holder has achieved.  With the vengeance and savvy of a founder of this nation, he has used America's legal system for what it was intended, justice.  Effectively through prudent litigation he has punished unethical practices in our private sector.  Never before have we seen such penalties.  I was wondering why BankofAmerica suddenly closed many of their drive up windows and reduced their tellers.  It is because they are attempting to mitigate a 16.65 billion dollar penalty for their involvement in hedge funds.  Similarly the state of North Carolina has levied a 25 million dollar fine on Duke Power for their irresponsibility concerning their coal ash pond leakages.  It seems to me that America has lost all her sensibility.  The right wing Republicans almost have succeeded attempting to hide our true history, the events that have molded our national philosophy.  

A Torment of Thoughts

Many thoughts are swirling around in my head at the moment.  They are disparate relating to the barrage of news stories we receive each day from our amateurish television networks.  News reporting is an egotistical recalcitrant child of the industry once she was.  It is not worth watching anymore, but we do it out of sheer boredom.  I do not watch current news because I want to be intelligently informed of the days activity.  I watch current news because it is a habit.  Watching the news once was a national habit. It bonded the nation together with honesty and integrity, when once we were able to be bonded.  Today we are disparate.  One only has to turn on the tube to see a smattering of hope from minorities.  Whether it be little people, African-Americans, trailer trash, or the like television desperately is trying to cater to some demographic.  Television has lost touch with America's mainstream, which is understandable.  Do we even have a mainstream anymore?  I think not.  Judging from what we see on television, every conceivable minority is seeking recognition.  What is television, and I don't mean the actual mechanical device?  It is changing from a clunky, RGB tube-oriented, analog communications device to a sleek tablet computer.  Is it prudent that television networks are seeking to reinvent their product on this new medium?  Does it matter?  Does it matter which wireless protocol television uses to broadcast it mediocre product?  Think about it.  Radio waves are radio waves, whether they are G4, WiFi, or normal television.  What do I mean by "normal television?"  Normal television was an analog signal broadcast over what we call radio waves.  Radio waves are a portion of the electro-magnetic spectrum the FCC considers safe for consumer use.  It was not long ago before past president Bill Clinton opted to auction off newer microwave frequencies, that television was a harmless wireless radio signal.  You bought a box from the store and an antenna from Radio Shack, and you were in business.  With a little tin foil and tweaking of your antenna you could receive four to five local television stations, enough to keep you relatively well informed about local and national events.  Today all of that has changed.  Providers instead are chasing the holy grail of the internet trying to eliminate "Mr. In Between."  I didn't get it until how.  The iPad must have a modem with great bandwidth thus requiring increased bandwidth from internet providers.  I remember when the new devices were being marketed.  A representative said they would gobble bandwidth happily supplying new content more akin to cable programming.  Netflicks and other streaming movie sites must be a part of this.  I never have watched television on my computer.  I do watch YouTube, and mostly I do not enjoy it.  I do not enjoy sitting at my computer desk staring at a screen several feet away listening to sound through tiny speakers.  It is not relaxing or entertaining.  It is informative the way I have come to recognize the function of a personal computer.  While I have opted to use iTunes to catalog my original music, I do not find it entertaining.  I find it informative.  The computer to me is informative.  It aids the pursuit of knowledge.  I am not sure America is ready for this change.  It would be interesting to hear if polls were taken what are the viewing habits of modern America.  Who watches what?  How do they watch?  I watch TV.  I sit down at night and channel surf with my antiquated analog remote control.  I have no cable box.  It is too complicated.  There are too many buttons and options.  It takes too long for the channels to change.  Often I flip through my entire selection of 60+ odd channels and find nothing but commercials, commercials all playing at the same time with little or no programming.  It is infuriating.  Then I remember that others must be streaming their own choices through the internet.  That is way too much trouble.  Isn't that why we pay network executives?  Isn't it their job to develop the weekly prime time schedule?  That is defunct.  I have realized that, as I watch advertisements for new shows.  They are desperate attempts at trying to represent and reach a contingency.  It seems to me the main contingency I recognize in America today is homosexual.  Rarely do I see anyone that bares a resemblance to characters in television shows I watched as a kid.  Truly we have changed as a country, and I do not relate.  I see confusion, weakness, and childishness.  Rarely do I see talent, vision, or artistry.  I have been spoiled, and I am getting old.  

Upon Having Traveled This Road Before

Life is full of challenges.  I am beginning to remember that life is not your destiny or your dream.  It seems like a lot of other people have achieved their dreams.  I have not.  I am not sure what they are anymore.  In any case often it is cited that life is the journey.  Life is the process.  Still occasionally it is nice to experience the spoils.  I believe I have tasted these spoils quite often in my life.  Also I have suffered the toils and tribulations of life.  It could be because personally I suffered quite early, I made the best of the later years.  Then of course you get old.  I stopped trying to taste the spoils not that long ago.  It felt too selfish.  I began to value experiences other than myself.  For example I came to understand what it was like to love your children.  I have none, but still at my station in life it made sense.  It didn't make sense to chase women.  Why expend your valuable energy chasing tail?  Well, now I am single.  Of course I miss having the heterosexual relationship, but I can blame no one.  I do not seek it.  It is not worth it to me.  Nothing seems much worth it to me these days.  I have disciplined myself to maintain a degree of interest in my chosen career, music. Because the pursuit of music is intertwined with romance, neither are at a peak with me.  I have arrived at a station where before I have traveled.  The first time it was tumultuous.  I experienced clinical depression.  That was a combination of many very real things.  I lost my job.  I lost my love.  I lost my life.  I myself was lost in the abyss.  Everything for which I had worked disappeared almost instantly.  No longer was I affiliated with academic teaching.  No longer was I playing music professionally.  No longer did I have the circle of friends who supported my pursuits.  They were taken away, and I fell completely and directly to the bottom.  Rock bottom.  It took quite a few years to put the pieces together again.  The station through which I traveled was here.  It is equally difficult the second time around, but at least I can benefit from my own previous enlightenment and healing.  I learned what caused my bereavement, and I worked on changing my life's circumstances to circumvent it in the future.  I was successful.  I had to move to a state five hundred miles away.  Over the course of ten years I entered, acclimated, and became accustomed to life in Columbus, Ohio.  In fact I was successful.  I was successful musically.  Just now I can remember that on a few isolated occasions I found a small degree of success in North Carolina as an adult.  One year in particular, the year my father had a small stroke, I substituted for him in his band.  For the period of about one year I played music in Fayetteville and had moderate success.  The gigs were good, and I was making a small amount of money.  Then he got well.  Again my opportunities were thwarted.  I changed and began to do musical theater.  I played in the pit orchestra for a number of musicals.  After "Footloose" opened immediately I received a phone call from Carnival offering me a job playing piano on their cruise ships.  I took it and never looked back until how.  Because my parents are aging and my father needed nursing care, I moved back into my childhood home with my mother.  I all but stopped doing ship work in lieu of being a homeowner.  I have spent my time tending to the yard, the house, and the cooking.  I have not spent much time trying to earn money playing music.  That is because there is very little opportunity to do so here in North Carolina.  I have found myself back at that station previously I have traversed.  It almost is as difficult the second time.  Not much is different.  The challenges are the same, except that the friends and contacts I once had are gone.  The few opportunities to play music all are gone too.  My mother would love for me to reinvent my musical career here.  It is not possible.  At the ripe age of fifty-two it is not possible to reinvent one's musical career, especially in one's home.  "You can't go home."  I am stuck.  I am stuck facing many of the same obstacles I traversed before.  In addition the road is more rocky.  It almost is an impossibility without moving again.  Uncannily the unforgiving environment of the "Old South" is the same as it was thirty years ago.  Nothing has changed.  It has  worsened.  Local society seems to have become more racist, more selfish, and more ignorant, or are they the same?  The narrow mindedness that plagues the South still is as strong as ever.  Truly the Confederacy hangs a flag over the State House in Columbia, South Carolina.  When one has traveled to escape oppression, it is difficult to face that oppression again.  After you have lived a life of freedom, enlightenment, and artisty, it is difficult to face oppression again.  It feels like Jesus.  What mortal can assume that responsibility?   I understand Jesus's struggles, and I understand that we as human beings are subject to similar struggles.  What I tire of is being persecuted for good.  I have figured out how to remain musically active.  I do it for my own well being.  I do it for my own interest.  I do it, because it is what I am meant to do.  God has told me this.  What I will not do is the thing you must do to be successful today.  You must succor your enemies.  You must recognize, succumb to, and then manipulate your enemies.  This is how it is done in the "Old South."  It is of no consequence the quality of your music.  It is of no consequence the quality of your art.  It is of no consequence one day you will become a great person.  What matters is that you are willing to kiss the asses of those around you.  They are the incumbents.  They are the nobility.  They are the locals.  They are the controlling populace who will determine your monetary success or failure.  Who has time to back pedal and play the fool for monetary gain?  Can we not be allowed to flourish and prosper without resistance?  Is not this the "American Dream?"  The South has risen again.  Never did they lose the America's Civil War.  They have been fighting it ever since. 

What is "Bad" Music?

After harping on the true definition of jazz music, I feel compelled to spell out exactly what is bad music or non music.  If I had to estimate a ratio of "real" music to "pop" music on television, I would have to put the percentages at about 95% to 5%.  Pop is heard 95% of the time, while real music is heard 5% of the time.  5% of the time the network must pay a realistic royalty to a composer and publisher.  A few television commercials or shows admit they have actually purchased the 'rights' of a particular song. With Steve Jobs' brain child, the iTunes Store, the royalty scale for ASCAP or BMI must be altered.  I can't imagined writer/publisher members are earning the same royalties they did a decade ago.  I would like to know.  If there is no real music on television than it doesn't have to be paid for.  Simple.  Conan O'Brien evidently lost his theme song when he changed networks, something in my opinion that degrades the show.  A theme song is crucial to establishing a relationship with an audience.  If there is no recognizable theme song, then what transpires is exactly what we have now.  Television programming is a huge wash.  You turn on the TV, find a network show, and it just flows.  There is no rhythm, such as comedic timing.  Once when television writing was at its pinnacle musical timing and comedic timing equally were essential.  This timing is what America has lost and for what has settled.  A wash.  We are being flooded in a huge wash.  There is not real distinction between the background music and the dialog.  Nebulously the inane dialog competes with the music with no real understanding of its content.  For their to be this relationship there must be a concept, an understanding of an idea.  It is far from a wash.  How music contributes to this wash is by defying the use of rhythm.  Instead they use an arrhythmic reciprocating of eighth notes in a 1/4  time signature.  Unlike African music this device has no musical significance.  Instead of carefully planning, choosing, and implementing specific musical lines, it is a wash.  A washout.  Sounds are nondescript, unrefined and blur together.  There is no independence between the voices.  What truly is amazing to me is that the television sounds I hear today are undefined in terms of envelope.  The sounds chosen are washes with no concrete attack and release.  Therefore when I watch the show, my brain fails to solve the riddle.  There is no riddle.  There is nothing to decipher.  There is no connection between the music and the dialog.  There is no reinforcement of the drama with the music.  Instead the music just smears all of art's traditional boundaries into a wash.  Who would want to watch or listen to such a thing?  The answer only is the mindless, because it truly is that.  We do not use our brains at all.  We vegetate.  Instead our brains are reinforced NOT to think.  The words, the sentences, the punctuation, and the paragraphs are reduced to mindless one liners.  One only would watch a few episodes of Seinfeld to see the difference.  It is a cruel, powerful, and evil ruse, the maiming of music. 

Is Jazz Pornography?

To the ignorant who question the idea that "jazz is anything," please question how and why Miles Davis was a musical genius who changed America.  Did he do so by "just doing anything?"  It is an interesting notion, because many people do not understand American jazz music.  Sonny Rollins, one of America's most iconic tenor saxophonists, sums it up admirably.  Jazz might be the stupidest thing anyone ever came up with. The band starts a song, but then everything falls apart and the musicians just play whatever they want for as long they can stand it. People take turns noodling around, and once they run out of ideas and have to stop, the audience claps. I’m getting angry just thinking about it.

Sometimes we would run through the same song over and over again to see if anybody noticed. If someone did, I don’t care.

There was this one time, in 1953 or 1954, when a few guys and I had just finished our last set at Club Carousel, and we were about to pack it in when in walked Bud Powell and Charlie Parker. We must have jammed together for five more hours, right through sunrise. That was the worst day of my life.  As it turns out Mr. Rollins did not actually write this.  When I read this interview in its entirely it had been posted on Facebook.  That of itself should throw up caution flags.  Facebook these days only causes me grief.  I believed the missive that Sonny Rollins felt he had wasted his life playing jazz.  It was credible.  It was credible because I feel the same way.  Fully I understood how someone that does not understand jazz music could make such assumptions.  The reality of jazz music is a polar opposite.  There is a reason whey often it is cited as America's only true art form.  Jazz music at its worst is all of the things stated in the New Yorker's satire.  I know this, because in my tenure working as a pianist on cruise ships I have encountered it time and time again.  We are required to play jazz on the final night of the cruise, and musicians hired to READ music otherwise must "get through" the jazz set.  Often it is heinous.  It is heinous, because without the required education one unequivocally cannot play jazz music.  The ignorant would disagree as do these unskilled jazz players.  They rely upon schmaltz, grandstanding, and masquerading.  I think I have experienced no worse feeling in the world than being demanded to accompany one of these players on a jazz set.  They feel that by being able to make a decent sound on an instrument and by the sheer enjoyment of listening to their own bullshit, they should be considered a credible jazz player.  Ask Miles Davis.  While it did not begin this way the resolution of the musical eighth note shrank.  It shrank into the mindless strum of a guitar.  Without consciously knowing it the guitar created the pop musical genre.  Without realizing that strumming down and then up in rapid succession creates an unrealistic musical spacing, the ignorant grasped the concept as validation for their ignorance at playing jazz.  The new concept, which is the concept of the pop musical genre, is instead of playing strongly and with a discernible rhythm pulse, you "lay down."  Like a dead fish you lay on your back, spread your legs, and get violated.  I watched an entire Mickey Dolenz Monkey's musical show, and it did just this.  Never during the entire show was their a discernible groove.  There never was a pattern or a clave of rhythm that you could understand, subdivide, or feel.  Instead rhythm became a wash of sound.  The melodies and harmonies were being played but devoid of any discernible rhythm.  When I first had the band AC DC I hated them.  It was because they are a pop/rock band.  They masquerade as fury, but when they play their instruments they are tepid.  Pop music has capitalized on this loophole, and it destroyed American popular music.  No longer were you required to have physical skill articulating musical passages.  Simply you turned your amps up, made the synonymous physical gestures, and played as weakly as humanly possible.  This was the goal, because removing musical intent was the only way to glorify the ego of the listener.  I have trouble with this concept.  There is valid pop/rock music.  There are band who use the technique of playing between the kick drum and the snare drum in a lazy, loping, reciprocating feel.  The rest are marauders.  American music has become a congregation of marauders.  Other than this lack of rhythmic integrity or "swing" feeling, jazz marauders actually do not know the songs they are playing.  If they do happen to know the song (or rather its melodic and harmonic progression), they do not know the appropriate scales with which to improvise new melodies.  Melodies and their accompanying chords are finite.  They are tangible.  They are mathematic.  The last thing they are are "jazz is anything I think it is."  "Tunes" or songs comprise the musical vehicles for jazz performance.  These tunes comes in varying styles, most commonly the ballad, the medium-tempo-swing tune, the bossa, the samba, shuffle-funk, and African 12/8.  Only in this area of style or feel could the phrase "jazz is anything" be entertained.  Unluckily purveyors of "Smooth Jazz" have exploited this back door.  They emerged as jazz wanna-be's and decided if you could play with a decent sound on your instrument but actually knew the song and its progression, you could be a musical star.  American jazz never has recovered.  As a former jazz music educator at two major universities, I like to define jazz this way.  "Jazz is swing-oriented improvisation music based upon the American popular song and the twelve bar blues."  The American popular song often uses the form A-A-B-A with the B section being called the song's "bridge."  The Great American Songbook truly is the source for jazz's evolution.  Iconic musical figures such as Miles Davis developed and expanded the content of jazz music.  Three significant contributions made to jazz music by Miles Davis were the invention of "Cool Jazz," "Modal Jazz," and "Jazz Fusion"  Unlike what widely is believed Miles created fusion with two seminal recordings, "In a Silent Way," and "Bitches Brew."  It was not long after Miles 'went electric' that other bands followed.  Most notably is Joe Zawinul's birth child, "Weather Report."  Modal jazz substituted a musical mode for a harmonic chord progression.  Most often it was the Dorian, a musical scale that has its roots in antiquity.  Cool jazz created a contemplative, unhurried, more quiet rendition of songs than Bebop. The essence of jazz is the essence of all real music.  It has definable parameters.  It has a tangible structure consisting of a foundation, its content, and its marketing.  Only a musician mesmerized by the idea that they could masquerade as a great musician could believe that any of these things could be sacrificed.  Contrarily the knowledge and skill it demands to play jazz is significant.  First one must be an accomplished instrumentalist.  Second one must know the repertoire of songs.  Third one must have studied the craft and art of improvisation.  It is a life long process akin to religion.  Spirituality also is involved something we have moved away from in shallow America.  The music that has raped and pillaged America's valid music easily is defined.  It is all of the things real music is not.  It seeks to have no impact on society.  It seeks to be tepid and weak.  It seeks to make no statement.  It seeks NOT to define a principle, opinion, or boundary.  It seeks only to masturbate at the basest human level.  It is pornography.  

The Extinction of American Popular Music

When I was a college teacher I never got much resistance from my students about what I taught.  They believed me, because I was talented as a musician.  Later in life when I was not teaching young people began to question and disagree with things I felt strongly about.  One was the definition of jazz.  As American music has regressed the traditional postulates of a quality music education have been cast aside.  America is fond these days of qualifying her own bullshit.  Just as historical periodicals threw in the towel for better sales, the rest of America has followed.  When Time magazine questions the validity of God on their front cover, we should know something is amiss.  I try to remember that the Holocaust was not really that long ago.  The murderous atrocities of Adolph Hitler still are lukewarm, and they are surrounding us each and every day.  Fascism is ensconced in American society and is being promulgated by the powers at be.  The powers at be in my realization are a younger generation of Americans that missed the school bus.  It seems they were exempt from developing a sound moral conscience, because the ethical standards by which America has stood and thrived have been compromised.  If you abolish Christianity then those ignorant are free to behave as they wish with no regard for their common man.  While I do believe there are such movements in play in our country, ignorance has become a metaphor for these compromised ideals.  Ignorance only can be the cause of the fall of music and television.  As I have begun watching and listening more critically, instead of getting angry I am getting disillusioned.  Music education always has been a liberal art, a collection of disciplines chosen by the ancient Greeks that were deemed crucial to a fulfilling human existence.  We have grown so far away from these liberal arts, that America bears little resemblance to her once glory.  We lead in very little these days.  I can't really think of anything in particular that can be attributed to American ingenuity.  What I have found is my cultural proclivities are matched only by other nationalities.  I find great comfort in the musical works of the Russians.  They, unlike music I hear in America, resonate with me as being vibrant, wise, and visionary.  The Russian Five while rebelling against Tchakovsky's nationalism sought to forge their own musical futures not by adhering to anachronistic dogma but by pushing the limits of music.  Similarly the Second Vienesse School, something of which I never hear about in America, pioneered a new kind of musical expression.  This expression represents an evolution of the human mind and spirit, something of which we know not in America.  We still are stuck in the doldrums of worthless pop fodder with no thought for a rebirth of a once former nation.  It is because we do not care.  I am not sure why everyone seems to have laid down their arms and surrendered. Unquestionably during the tenure of George W. Bush there was an avid campaign of fear and intimidation.  With a lack of emphasis and thus funding of public education, Americans have grown more and more ignorant.  With this ignorance has come a selfishness that belies rational understanding.  How can society expect to provide empathy to those desiring to be ignorant?  Luckily I have been shielded from this movement most of my life.  Only moving back to Fayetteville, North Carolina have I witnessed such an unsettling ignorance.  Just as many Republican pundits have campaigned upon, there is a large active faction of worthless Americans looking for handouts.  How does the city of Fayetteville respond?  It refuses to allow a new manufacturing plant to build here providing hundreds of sorely needed jobs.  Likewise many of the homeless shelters have been closed demanding these citizens live under bridges in the bitter cold.  I take pride in transporting my refuse to the city landfill.  It is like a little adventure having my pick up truck weighed and paying a few dollars to make the city cleaner.  Today the city requires personal vehicles pay a flat twenty dollar fee no matter what the content or quantity of their load.  Twenty dollars to pay to get rid of your garbage?  I refuse, and while I realize it is an attempt to truncate the line of cars at the dump, I do not agree.  That is fascist to charge citizens to unload their garbage.  We should be rewarded with a tax break for being conscientious.  Whether it is possible that the faction of gratuity seekers still is playing the slavery card I am not sure.  Racism like many ills of America have returned to blossom in this new ignorance.  It doesn't matter.  What seems to matter is the more intelligent and thus affluent intend to keep taking advantage of us.  Those with no intelligence are shit out of luck.  Music and television are not helping like they should be.  At their great height in American history both mediums transcended petty selfishness and sought to educate America.  It was demanded.  It was demanded by a generation of purveyors who now rapidly have died.  Journalists, sports commentators, television writers, directors, and musicians have disappeared at a startling rate, and there is no one left to take the reins.  It is frustrating to me because my entire life I have been prepared to take these reins, but there was not opportunity.  Today I feel still there is no opportunity, because opportunity is controlled by politics.  Not only have my mentors moved on to a better place, what is left is ignorance.  It is an ignorance so deep that it is in denial.  Most easily it can be personified by one questioning the definition of jazz music.  Most easily that severe ignorance is expecting there to be no vocation.  "Why must we study music or television to be good at it?  Let just change the rules and pitch it out there, and no one will notice the difference."  One only has to pay attention to a television program to see that there is no concept.  Again the ignorant would say anything goes.  "Why would we need a 'concept' to give our shit meaning?"  Consequently we have shit.  It is due time that the shit is flushed by those knowing the difference.  That is not a panel of celebrities feeling they are qualified to adjudicate musical juries.  That is not untrained actors feeling they are qualified to act.  That is not pretty faces and curvaceous bodies twerking on stage.  There are disciplines, disciplines of television and music production.  Just because the tools of production have been shrunk into a laptop computer does not product create.  One must study the lineage of production that  is your predecessor.  A thorough study of those that came before your own damn self is the first step to enlightenment.  This principle often is cited in criticism of contemporary classical music.  "Does the music refer to anything other than itself, or is it just self indulgent masturbation?"  The personal computer and the internet once groundbreaking  now have succumbed to the shallow capitalism of America.  Once a connected data base of academic institutions, the internet now nurtures prostitution, pornography, and sex trafficking.  Story telling is a lost American art form,  because we do not have time in our days to listen to the toils of others.  We struggle to survive and our existence reflects it.  We are at a low point in American history.  This new ignorance is the simple declaration that American jazz is anything.  If anything seems to work, then it is jazz.  If anything is jazz, than anything is Rock 'n' Roll.  Anything is R&B.  Anything is country music.  Anything is soul music.  Anything is Gospel music.  This anything, the epitome of ignorance, is "pop" music and reality television.  Just as I labored watching an American Sniper live his meager life, I labor watching ignorant faux celebrities trying to entertain.  It is a disgrace, but humiliation has become the new American entertainment.  I first hand was involved in the transformation.  While working professionally as a musician on cruise ships, I watched Karioke usurp live music.  It seems this newer generation of ignorant rather would humiliate themselves for fun rather that watch an artistic band.  Slowly the observation of this humiliation overtook musical quality in cruise shows.  The people no longer were interested in the music.  They just wanted to watch the performers struggle at their jobs, because it was tangible.  It was more tangible than television, because we musicians were paid professionals attempting to do our jobs.  Never have I seen television cameras placed inside a courtroom to observe as a skilled attorney litigates a case.  Never have I seen cameras placed in an operating room to observe a skilled surgeon.  We have been sold out, musicians.  Once an energetic driving force of humanity has been reduced to a few nondescript digital samples of analog waveforms and jungle drums.  They are not even good drums.  

Being a Musician

I can't help it that I am a musician.  I can't help it that I am from the old school.  I don't feel old.  I wish I did.  They say you never really become an adult until your parents are gone.  My reality is at age fifty-two, I have been around long enough to have become extinct.  I'm sure in other places my profession carries on.  I am sure of it, because I have Facebook friends who are musicians.  I moved from Fayetteville, North Carolina to Columbus, Ohio to work on my doctorate of musical arts in composition.  I nearly finished had it not been for the eye disease kerataconus.  I needed cornea transplants in each eye, and I am grateful to be able to see.  My eyes are not what they used to be.  It seems in a college town music always is more active.  I was able to make a living in Columbus playing keyboards for several years.  I was an accomplished jazz pianist, but it is difficult to remember.  Now I am extremely isolated from music.  What I hear on television is most insulting.  I go on about this from time to time.  I'm not sure if I grew up in the golden age of television, but I must have.  I am lucky as the child of baby boomers that my cultural proclivities far are superior compared to the youth of today.  America drastically has changed during the last decade, and it has been for the worst.  I use television as an example, because in its golden age it was artistic.  It set an example for healthy behavior.  Today it is intended to dumb down the population.  Not only have we neglected our system of public education, we are bombarding our viewing citizens with trash.  As a musician I can't help to make value judgements about the quality of music around me.  Television music in particular has suffered the most.  Once it was the pinnacle for aspiring commercial composers.  Today it is an afterthought.  Like America's pop music it does nothing.  It does not inspire, it does not create art, and ironically is does not qualify as being music.  It, like the rest of reality television, fills space. It passes time.  It accomplishes nothing except for making Americans more ignorant.  We are bombarded with trash ruthlessly and without conscience.  Whether it is a conscious decision or the result of a suffering economy, television music is extinct.  What is taking its place is something that is not music.  It is noise.  It is constant droning noise that fills time and space.  Noise creates insensitivity.  We tune it out.  I have found since being back in Fayetteville, North Carlina all of my musical skills have faded because they are not being used.  Also they are not being reinforced.  Rarely if ever do I hear any music on television that qualifies as music.  Music is time organized in rhythm.  Rhythm is what is conspicuously absent from both television and pop music today.  Instead what is used is the lazy and usually drunken motion of a strumming guitarist.  It takes no musical knowledge to strum a guitar, and that motion of ignorance in a clever coup has defeated real music and taken its place.  This ignorance in music I have come to realize is the partner in crime to ignorant reality television.  Music had to be dumbed down or it would upstage the non actors.  When I am blessed to be able to watch and listen to a music video from its golden years, I am shocked by the quality of its sound.  Even when bands are performing live in large arenas surrounded by noisy fans, the pure audio quality  coming from the stage is amazing.  Often I have to do a double take to see if I really am hearing a live performance.  If these vintage videos or any of the Top 100 from history's Billboard charts were to be heard today, it would cement that reality that today's pop music is indeed not real music.  Systematically this is why quality television programming, quality radio music, and music television are buried.  The music industry that is in power today in America wants it that way, because they would not be in power if that comparison ever emerged.  After watching Superbowl number forty-nine this evening, I found all of the terrible shortcomings of cheap film music have made their way onto television.  They really are the same, and that was an infuriating realization.  I have wanted to write film music almost my entire life, and this is what I have to listen to?  I understand I do not have to listen to it, but why must I at age fifty-two give up the entertaining things I have had my entire life?  Is it a right of passage?  Is God trying to tell me something?  I think this is possible.  I have tried feverishly to maintain my professional keyboard rig for the last two years.  It has been difficult.  Only last night after I have programmed its patches three separate times all of this work was lost in what must have been one blast of static electricity.  All of the programs that call up my quality chosen sounds mysteriously vanished.  Instead I got a ROM chip validation that the system was good, and each and every patch that had been named were now INIT.  INIT.  The memory had been initialized.  After scanning the manual for this unit I could find no such parameter in its menus.  Synthesizers of course have this function.  It was unnerving.  Because I know I can re-program the controlling patches, I didn't get angry.  I was dismayed.  Three separate times all ready I have done this trying to keep this rig operational.  The first time the patches were lost by a technician changing its battery.  The second time, lightening struck.  This is the third time.  Because the music industry today is so different than before, the piece of gear I am using to control my rig no longer is manufactured.  They would rather sell you expensive computer gear that does not sound as good.  I am from the old school, and old school is better.  I do not want to carry a laptop computer with me to a gig.  It is expensive, it is a theft temptation, and it is not musical.  I had to take this piece of gear apart and try to find some anomaly.  It seems the battery holder was a little loose, so I bent it with some long-nosed pliers.  I have no way of knowing if this will happen again.  It takes many long hours choosing sounds, setting up MIDI routings, programming patch changes, and naming settings.  I should be good at it by now.  Because I am so disillusioned with music today, I am beginning to think that it is time to draw the chapter of electronic music in my life to a close.  I have over  four hours of contemporary classical piano music that needs publishing.  Why am I wasting my time on this keyboard gear?  The answer is it gives me immense pleasure.  The sounds I create exponentially are better than any sounds you hear today.  The sounds (sound) you hear today completely is hackneyed.  It is a hack.  I'm not sure today if our ignorant youth would even understand what a hack is.  A fake.  They are too worried about being homosexual and mediocre, and it has become the entertainment industry's job to stroke their egos with dribble.  I have little pleasure in my life today.  One major thing that has kept me happy for several years is seen as an enemy today.  Republican businessmen can't make money on skateboarding.  It like art is an uplifting and enlightening sport.  We can't have that, seeing as the sole responsibility of adolescent TV is to be ignorant.  Skateboarding.  Skateboarding creates physical pleasure by allowing the rider to defy gravity.  In Fayetteville, North Carolina our gravity no longer is a virgin.  Our gravity while strong enough to keep our feet on the ground does not seems as strong as the infrasonic waves that beat us everyday.  They are so strong here from air and rail traffic that they can move objects.  This barometric air pressure makes it nearly impossible to surf a wave the traditional way.  It creates its own never-ending wave that like bad television and pop music seizes power over what was good.  America has become overrun with this movement and we are dying as a result of it.  Terrorism in America does not have to be violent.  Slowly and without recognition it is killing our citizens with ease in our own homes.  How can I qualify the ignorance of this non-music?  It is simple.  The motion it uses as a substitute for rhythm is that of a mindless drunken stooge.  It requires no thought.  How is it possible to have music with no thought?  It is because it is not music.  It is noise.  

I didn't finish my thread.  I'm not sure if I can remember it now, a few hours later.  I was talking about the necessity of getting to know a thirty year old house, again.  I didn't really get to know it when I lived here in my youth.  What I am beginning to remember are a few things.  One is I was an avid model railroader.  When we moved into this particular home, it had a double garage.  That was to be my mecca.  After dinner each evening I would retreat to this garage and work on one of two model railroads I built over the four years I was in high school.  There was something sanctuary about this space.  (knowing full well that the word sanctuary is a noun, not an adjective)  The house into which we moved the summer before my freshman year in high school was three stories.  The den and double garage were built on a concrete slab.  I didn't understand the relevance of this then.  Today fully I understand the benefit.  Concrete is solid, therefore our den and garage seem solid. There could be no more perfect place for our vintage Hammond A-100 organ and Leslie 145 than in this den.  The pine paneling creates a favorable listening space.  Perhaps in the future the carpeting should come up revealing the hardwood beneath it and offering more treble response to its sound.  Ironically in the last several months I discovered that termites had made a meal of the exterior wall of this garage.  While there is a brick facade on the outside, the three small windows that provided illumination to this space appeared to be eaten by termites.  Their frames were riddled with hollow gouges painted over many times.  We contracted the same builders who replaced our windows and installed vinyl siding on our upstairs.  They did an admirable job replacing these windows and all of the damaged framing underneath the drywall.  What we got was a pristine looking wall with three gorgeous windows.  Definitely it changed the feel of the garage.  Quickly I covered up that newly insulated wall with my junk.  The positive result was the garage is much more quiet and a bit more temperature controlled.  It still gets cold, but I have found it much easier to work out there with an even temperament.  I can see better, and I am not distracted by the aircraft noise.  Fully I hope this cold winter will dispense with soon.  Even an efficient kerosene heater does not make it appealing to venture there in the cold weather.  I cannot remember this issue when I lived here as an adolescent.  Besides building a train layout in our garage, evidently I spent a fair amount of time on our baby grand piano in the living room.  The only thing I can remember about this is my mother having to set the timer on the stove to see that I practiced thirty minutes a day.  It was brutal.  I didn't really like practicing, yet I became an accomplished classical pianist.  I don't know how really.  I was not a good sight-reader, but over a given period of time I could figure out a piece of music.  I could learn it in my own time frame.  This Knabe baby grand still sits in this same living room, yet I have failed to make peace with it.  Possibly it is because I have been spoiled working on ships performing often on Yamaha C7 seven foot grands.  These particular pianos largely were responsible for my composing output while on ships.  The instrument is so effective, and each note is so clear and strong, all one must do is pick out the pretty notes.  My goal one day is to have one of my own, but not necessarily in the space occupied by this Knabe baby grand owned by my father.  Over the years this piano functioned admirably.  I learned to play the piano solely on this instrument.  Today I cannot bear to play it, because it has been neglected.  More truthfully I cannot bear to play it, because it belongs to my father.  It is his war artifact, and it has served its purpose.  I feel no sentimental connection with it whatsoever.  Instead I enjoy playing my own Yamaha P2 piano in our foyer.  I do have a tangible connection with it, because I  purchased it with my own money.  This money came from the sale of my Roland MKS-20 Super Jupiter synthesizer module.  It was a worthy trade, and other than having a burnt out backlight it was a solidly professional instrument.  It  could use some more creative patches, but that is for its new owner to provide.  I have a limited sentimental connection with our Hammond A-100.  It doesn't feel like mine, again because it was  purchased by my father.  Most things in this house were purchased by my father.  The exceptions are the things that mean the most to me.  While eventually I did inherit our Honda Ct-70h minibike, and I take great pleasure in riding it on the street to this day, I value the two motorcycles I bought myself with my own money.  I guess all things are like this.  Living here again makes me a different person.  It makes me considerably different than who I  am.  It is difficult to remember who this is, because this heritage is overwhelming.  It surrounds me each and every day.  Without meaning to it inundates my soul.  I have difficulty finding my soul at all.  Often it is more comforting to try and remember, yet when I do I feel is loss.  I feel the loss of my father's presence.  I feel the loss of my sister's presence. I feel a loss of most of the positive things I experienced here in this house.  Namely this is the conspicuous absence of my one and only true love.  We have been separated for many years, and it was I ultimately who made this decision.  She agreed with it.  It necessarily is not healthy to forage these memories.  The same couch is in our living room where we necked, but making this connection is not healthy, is it?  It necessarily is not healthy to try to make new memories in this same space.  How am I supposed to live here now with these issues?  Systematically I have organized, cleaned, and separated my father's belongings from my own.  It has taken a lengthy two year period to accomplish such a thing.  I think I have been thoughtful, respectful, and kind.  Still the absence of his things and the inclusion of mine has not made the adjustment easier.  Still it is difficult to dwell here, because it really is not my house.  It is my parents.  

Re-Entry

It seems I am an anomaly.  After having girlfriends almost my entire life, I landed at age fifty-two living with my mother.  I have no children.  I have no wife.  It is uncanny.  I do not know how I ended up in such a state.  Certainly such a situation demands acclimation.  I have come to realize that the majority of adjustment are in environment.  The last time I lived in this particular home was when I was in high school.  It is difficult to look back.  Why would one want to look back over thirty years at one's life then?  Surely after one has lived half a century the soul searching should be completed.  That is what is unique about my situation.  As an adult, a mature adult although often I do not feel mature, I am back living in a similar environment to one while I was attended high school.  There are several major differences.  The most conspicuous are the absence of half of my immediate family.  Because I do not have a wife or children I am speaking of my immediate family.  This consists of my mother, my father, and my sister.  I am living with my mother because my father at age eighty-six needs the care of a nursing home.  He is lucid, but living in a two story home was not an option for either my mother or me.  His move also took some acclimation, but it happened on his part.  No longer does he want to come "home."  Well, not that often.  That acclimation on my part is far from complete, and there is a simple reason for it.  The majority of time I lived in this house, the four year period I attended high school, I was a child.  This home was purchased by my parents, furnished by my parents, and run by my parents.  This provided a certain cushion for my existence.  Never did I have to bond with the house.  My life was focused on my education and more importantly for me my personal life with my girlfriend.  While living here now I have neither.  I have a much broader and far reaching education, and I have had many girlfriends.  Trying to rewrite my own history with this house almost is impossible, but I keep trying.  There only is so much you can do to modernize your environment before it instructs you you have gone to far.  Then I retrace my steps, undo changes I have made, and proceed.  I think once again I am teetering on this brink.  It is difficult to live in a foreign environment, so it is normal to try to make friends.  As in my case this not always is possible.  Some things just can't be changed.  One of them is Fayetteville, North Carolina.  While many things drastically are different here such as the level of education and its inhabitants, the core of Fayetteville remains steadfast.  The same populace that has controlled Fayetteville staunchly sits on top of their old money controlling its purse strings.  There is little room for diversity.  Instead their is a glorification of the military.  In reality this glorification really is just brown nosing.  The old money of Fayetteville has come from the military, and to keep it it requires constant tending.  It gets old, this tending of the military.  There are other things in life.  There are things other than learning how to kill.  There are things other than learning how to be a soldier.  There are things other than the 82nd Airborne.  There are things other than air traffic, rapid troop mobilization, and wars.  During the late l970's the war in Viet Nam had come to a close.  Richard M. Nixon after a long ten year war, decided it was time to stop fighting.  American troops exited Viet Nam and returned to the U.S.  After living through the Viet Nam war during my childhood and a violent junior high school, the peaceful years of Ronald Reagan were welcome.  Probably they and my college years may have been the best years of my life.  Certainly they were the most fun.  We now live in a different time.  Generation X has moved aside and we have a new youthful generation.  Only can I think they must be called Generation 9/11.  As I really begin to pay attention to what is happening in America after twelve years abroad, it is startling.  It is crystal clear what this generation has seen and experienced.  They sexually are ambiguous.  It no longer seems to matter which gender they are.  I am not sure this is what God intended.   What is most striking is their deserved mediocrity.  I see reality show after reality show, and I see shows that must be produced by this newer generation.  They seem to demand an adherence to their own mediocrity.  It is a kind of selfishness that only could some from miseducation.  When one is ignorant one only can demand that the rest of the world be like you, ignorant.  There no longer seems to be a model of success and not financial success.  There no longer seems to be a model of "celebrity."  There no longer is a model of "movie star."  The quality that seems to have existed in American Hollywood since its inception has grown extinct.  Maybe it is an anachronism.  Maybe with global terrorism and extreme Islam the glamor of Hollywood no longer is relevant.  Still there was and is something underneath the glamor of Hollywood.  There was an artistry and sophistication.  There was a class and education that existed much as it has throughout the world's history.  Whether it was in courts of Europe, the studios of Hollywood, or the performing stages of universities a better more artistic life existed.  Slowly we are seeing the extinction of such a thing.  Is it fair that the ignorant demand all mankind regress to their mediocre level?  It is happening, and reality television is not helping.  We in America have become a generation of brown nosers.  We canvass the vote, and then we tend it for our own selfish good.  It truly is a shite state of affairs.  

American Sniper

Again I will say that the recent onslaught of film releases is a bit overwhelming.  Again I will ask how films can be nominated for prizes when they have not been released.  While it seems as if there are some quality films in this recent stew, a staggered period of release would be easier for the consumer to absorb.  It's hype.  What difference does it make?  A film is a film.  Rarely do they lose money.  If they do lose revenue at the box office there are a slew of other platforms for their viewing and subsequent earning.  The first and only movie I have seen in over a year was American Sniper.  I wanted to see a film that was nominated for best picture.  I was disappointed.  As a composer it was unnerving that there was no musical score.  Upon reflection I do understand that this movie is not intended to be mainstream entertainment.  I think we can agree on that.  It is not a documentary either.  If it had been it would have been more entertaining.  American Sniper was far from entertaining.  It was down right boring at times.  I looked at my watch and asked myself why I was being asked to watch such mundane activity.  It I believe was intended to be a real life story, a glimpse of a Navy Seals average ordinary life.  While most of us know that is a contradiction, this is how it came off in the movie.  There was little notoriety about the unusual skills of a Navy Seal.  Instead it seemed like an accurate depiction of the life of a G.I.  It was rote, it was jar-headed, and it was lifeless.  It had to be an conscious decision by the films director and producer to eliminate emotion from their characters.  It is understandable that a tactical warrior operating at that level would be encumbered by feelings.  He was a machine, and watching an emotionless machine for over two hours is not entertaining.  At the end of its expose the viewer is entitled to one short sentence written on the screen explaining that this particular Navy Seal was killed by another war veteran he was trying to help.  One sentence.  It didn't make sense at all.  Possibly that is because his murderer is yet to stand trial.  The trial is scheduled for February.  After two solid hours of inane melodrama with no musical underpinning, suddenly we are expected to break down and feel sympathy over the Seal's death.  It didn't make sense.    Understanding that Bradley Cooper produced this movie could explain these points.  Effective actors are no always effective producers.  I'm sure that Clint Eastwood needed a gig.  I just wish he had been hired to write a score.  

League Deinflation

While the American Soccer scandal mildly may be diverting,  the case of under inflated footballs is moot.  Moot.  Cold air brings compression.  Air recedes, compresses, and decreases when cold.  Your tire pressure will diminish when cold.  Only I know of this because my mother's "under inflated" beacon began to illuminate on her Honda when it got cold.  I was an ass.  I did not take the threat too seriously, but I did vow to check the tire pressure on our three motor vehicles.  I did.  With a small air compressor purchased from Harbor Freight I righted the wrong.  I in the darkness of our driveway did the check the air pressure of our three vehicles on a Tuesday in the cold.  It seems the measure was low.  The thirty pounds-per-square-inch measure severely was under.  The pounds were low.  Thirty was twenty.  Twenty.  Dangeroso.  It took me thirty minutes at least to check the tire pressure in twelve tires, and with a little Harbor Freight air compressor re-fill their cavities with the recommend air pressure.  (Namely thirty pounds)  A Honda, a Toyota, and a Nissan all suffered the same fate.  Ten pounds less of air due to the cold weather.  (Let's say I am like a ship floating off some coast never to be found.  Let's say I am a ship never that will reach a port, if I stay alive)  Remedied pound pressure.  Ten pounds down.  Let's let the NFL live in peace.  Their balls were deflated.  Mine have been for two year.  What I know is when my basketball was deflated at OSU, my basketball skills increased exponentially.  Well not may exponentially but they were way better tendering that heavy sack.  I became a class "A" basketball player one summer,after General Exams swimming each day after not completing the D.M.A. degree in music composition.  It was glorious.  A hoop, asphalt, and a metal backboard.  These were my companions for one glorious summer of non-DMA completion.  I long for the same today.  A "swishing" net, a metal pole, and asphalt turf.  "Slowly I turn....."   

The American Dream, No the American Slave

First I must turn on my deterrent.  It's my desperate attempt at thwarting the effect of the "Allergen Pump."  To be able to see the computer screen clearly, I have to place a fan in my window pointed at CSX-T's mainline less then several miles away.  I turn the fan on exhaust and let it blow to its heart's content.  A fan doesn't have a heart, or a mind, or an intent.  Only it serves its industry.  In this rare case that is an individual.  There is no business involved other than my writing this blog entry or article as they may come to be called.  The canvass upon which I would write is not blank.  It is rife with deterrents.  Cleverly and invisibly my mind and my body are at a disadvantage.  I have to struggle to accomplish the same things I accomplish in other places, because of this deterrent.  It could be difficult to realize the deterrent is arbitrary.  It is the roguish by-product of mass transportation, and this mass transportation rarely involves human beings.  This transportation which effects my life each and every day is transportation of products.  Logistics they call it.  Container shipping.  Never would I know that Fayetteville, North Carolina is a mecca for industry.  Industry?  Nestled along the banks of the polluted swamp water of the Cape Fear River are industries that go unnoticed to the day to day population of Fayetteville.  They are operating incognito.  Hidden.  Stealth.  The by products of these industries are strong.  They pollute our drinking water and they pollute our breathable air.  No one seems to notice other than that the people of Fayetteville die of cancer at a rate much higher than other geographic locations.  Ho hum.  Conspiracy.  It is not a conspiracy, it is the American Dream for some.  It has and it always will be.  America has not changed.  I knew the very minute I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I never would make a living in the state of North Carolina.  I never have.  It is not possible, because I failed to learn the political lesson required to become a self-sufficient citizen in our fair state.  It is called brown nosing.  It is called ass kissing.  It is called politics.  Oddly enough all of the wisdom and talent I have accrued during my education is not necessary.  What is necessary is that I fit in with the "In Crowd."  They are in control, because of their old money.  Their money creates the local economy in which I would need to work to make ends meet.  No one is concerned with artistic achievement, excellence, or personal wealth, because that would upset the status quo that has been in existence for centuries.  Truly it is amazing America has not changed since her rocky inception.  While she has fought wars, wars with losses reaching hundreds of thousands of soldiers, still America has not changed.  The Confederacy is alive and well, and they want nothing to do with them Damn Yanks.  I live in this confederacy.  I knew the minute I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, there was no way in hell ever I would make a living in the fair state of North Carolina.  That would mean I would have to give up my scholarly and artistic pursuits and learn to kiss ass for a living.  They do it all around me.  People living in this south, exactly like they did a century ago, meet for lunches.  They have dinner parties.  They drink mint julep.  They sit on their porches with one another revering in the notion that they like one another.  It is the most important thing.  The "In Crowd" only is concerned with their own mock happiness created through the admiration of others.  It is not created by the pursuit of things good.  It is not created by the pursuit of things moral.  It is not created by the pursuit of things ethical.  it is not created by the pursuit of things religious.  These would encroach on their practices of making money.  Next to fitting in making money is the next most important requirement for living in the Olde South.  It is not much of an existence.  Actually it makes my stomach turn to lay down, to play dead, or to sacrifice the hunt.  Without the hunt what challenge is left in life?  The "Lost Colony" were not privy to abandoning the hunt.  Even while they acutely were aware of its necessity for their survival in North Carolina, still they perished.  How is it possible that those who are entrenched in the hunt are not flourishing?  It is because the American Dream is dead.  It has been for quite a while.  It used to be profitable for the common man to excel.  Not anymore.  Now it is profitable for the common man to die.  We will try to treat them with our medical establishment.  We will overlook the causes to their diseases and instead treat them with inflated procedures that keep the "In Crowd" in.  We will deny them education.  We will offer them inferior products.  We will pollute the land upon which they live.  America has not changed a bit.  My fight feels every bit the same as a slaves fight for freedom.  It is psychological.  I never could know this oppression, could I?  Yes I could.  Because the slaves now are free does not mean the same struggle does not exist to make a living.  It is the same.  I turn on my deterrent.  My anti "Allergen Pump" meagerly attempts to blow back their fog easily that can envelop my existence.  It has.  It takes every amount of energy and concentration I have to overcome it, because the Republicans are skilled are changing the rules when we are not looking.  They slant the field a little at a time, before we even realize that the ball rolls downward on its on.  We are Capitalist, and this is what capitalism is.  It is not fair.  It is not just.  It is not moral.  It is not ethical.  It is not religious.  It is ruthlessly selfish in its pursuit of monetary gain.  It is like walking in a "Land of Giants" scuffling around the feet of the gods.  They are recalcitrant.  They are misbehaved.  They are unscrupulous, and they are going nowhere.  It is their old money that is our local economic infrastructure.  The American Dream is a grift.  It is a scam.  It hoax.  Do you really believe the "In Crowd" was going to allow you to make your fortune in their briar patch?  

An Assault of Kinesthesia

What is kinesthesia?  Kinesthesia like infrasound is something in which America no longer is interested.  Unlike the l980's when cocaine and its result, exercise and fitness, were popular America today is apathetic.  We want weed.  Because we cannot control and therefore fix our polluted American environment, we retreat.  I myself have learned how to retreat.  I no longer seem to be able to use my own kinesthesia in my favor.  My "mojo" is dormant.  It is hiding, because it knows it cannot win.  The Republicans once again have changed the rules to favor their own game.  The playing field has been tilted, and we as a populace are losing.  Instead we are retreating, trying to find some respite from the pain and suffering.  Why do we deserve to suffer again?  Possible it could be because recent generations of Americans have been spared the tumult that has occurred in other periods of American history.  We have had no Civil War.  We have not had the fight for suffrage.  Still we are battling civil rights.  It is possible we are seeing things of which we have been immune for several decades.  Somehow we as a country side-stepped strife, the strife of the Great Depression, the strife of world wars, and the strife of injustice.  It is hear again.  Only can I think that human solutions must be created by human ideas.  Human ideas come from humanity.  Humanity comes from humans.  The very process of being human or rather being a human  is key.  Humanity traditionally has allowed us to capitalize on the human body and the human mind.  It is a coexistence of both that transcends the human spirit.  Ideas, thoughts, and feelings combine in creativity.  We are rewarded with our senses, and yet also we use them as an impetus for creation.  Today that physical or rather somatic methodology is moot.  No longer do we tap into and rely upon our sensory perceptions, because they are being mangled.  The once clean canvass of our landscape has become so polluted with electricity, sound, and toxins it is a miracle the human race has survived.  Consequently we have become a race of zombies.  It is fitting seeing as this is mainstream American entertainment.  It we continue to fail to reinforce artistic successes in our country, it will not be long before they are forgotten.  We will be burning books like there is no tomorrow.  

Satan's "Land of the Giants"

My ears are ringing.  Especially my left ear is ringing with tinnitus. In the film Conspiracy Val Kilmer clearly through his character Marine Sergeant MacPherson tells the world what causes his tinnitus.  Tinnitus actually is hearing loss, frequencies of hearing loss that somehow are affected by low frequency sound.  When infrasound is present these frequencies of hearing loss "ring" with tinnitus.  I have known this to be true for two reasons.  One is I have had slight hearing loss in my left ear for a while.  Second is because I am sensitive to infrasound.  As a musician it is common knowledge that often we rely upon otoacoustic hearing, hearing that occurs from mechanisms other than our ears.  Most often it is from the skin.  Just as an unborn baby can "hear" music in the womb, we also can translate musical tones into our minds in other ways than actual hearing with the ears.  It is helpful.  When a musician performs most successfully it is likely because they are "playing to the sound."  Playing to the sound is something that was reiterated in the Miles Davis band.  You actually play to the sound you are hearing.  You hear it, and then you manipulate it to create music.  Some way you "get inside the sound."  When I compose at the piano, most successfully at a Yamana C7 grand piano, I am composing to the sound that is coming off the harp.  I am listening and feeling the sound that is created and mixes in the chamber of the grand piano.  I hear it, but also I feel it on my skin.  The combination of these two thing being driven my my musical mind is what allows me successfully to compose.  Many do not know or understand this, and many do not care.  It only is the handful of us that are blessed with this gift also that suffer its curses.  My ears are ringing.  My ears are ringing because there is an intense infrasonic wave bombarding my dwelling.  As I sit perched in a second story corner room protected by new vinyl siding and double-paned windows, the sound wave is so strong it is capable of moving objects.  This phenomenon has been studied and is widely documented.  The effects of infrasound are disturbing at most levels, and I won't reiterate them.  What I will way it this particular infrasound wave is violating my civil rights.  Invisibly it is blurring my vision, causing my joints to ache, and inhibiting my thought process.  In addition to these disconcerting symptoms, it causes my ears to ring.  The ring has gotten louder.  There are a finite group of man made object that create infrasound.  Again no one cares, yet it  is disrupting our society at a level greater than anyone could imagine.  The irony of the situation is because infrasound tangibly can be "felt" in the air by sensitive persons, there are times when I am at war with it.  It is like a selfish, antagonistic, bully that carries on in most cases no matter what I do.  Especially on the weekends it sits in my home controlled by no human.  Endlessly it vomits is mindless soulless message.  It means nothing.  Its only purpose it to support its own industry.  It is a pollutant by product that is unmonitored and unregulated.  Consequently like global warming which finally has been confirmed, we suffer.  The two percent of the time it disappears from my consciousness and my ears, I feel normal.  I feel good.  I feel like I used to feel back in the l980's.  When it is active the other ninety-eight percent of the time, my entire life is disrupted.  Recently the most menacing effect of this rogue sound wave is of an allergen pump.  The south it seems is rife with allergens.  Never before have I been aware of these irritants until I moved back.  What nemesis.  Allergies.  A running nose, watery itchy eyes, and sneezing all are the by products of allergens.  The kicker is an infrasound wave by nature tends to be continuous.  It is created by a machine that is used by man.  The men that use these machines seem to have no respect for their fellow men judging from the infrasound they create.  Unlike air traffic it proliferates twenty-four hours a day.  It is happiest in the late afternoon to the wee hours of the morning.  On the weekends it is continuous.  Often it is not even controlled by a human being.  It is an autopilot.  It just blows and blows and blows.  My eyes burn from the allergens that are being pumped through the air.  My ears ring, and I suffer.  The Allergen Pump.  If media is trying to paint a portrait of extremism in America, there is no need to look past our own economical infrastructure.  Extremism in America infiltrated our economic infrastructure years ago.  Extremism is in the products we are being offered.  It is in our system of health care.  It is in our government.  Rogue violent attacks on our populaces are a mere tip of the iceberg to the extremism that exists today.  The extremism that exists today is the same as it always has been.  It can masquerade as muslim, but it is American.  It is the same wealthy elite that always have ruled America.  By nature they also are invisible, but like infrasound they are potent.  I deal with each on a day to day basis.  The majority of my time is spent "dealing" with these antagonists.  There is the physical antagonist which actually kills our population.  Then there is the psychological antagonist which kills our spirit.  It is both, and their ethnic cleansing seems to be more keen than other countries.  It has been happening for quite some time.  Cancer spreads.  It has prospered.  It is lucrative.  Death is more lucrative than life so it would seem in America.  The Land of the Giants, giants that have been with us since human inception.  They control and they will continue to control by death.  The allergen pump should be turned off.  The results will be surprising, possibly not to the economic structure it supports, but to the rest of American civilization.  

The Analogue Landscape

My eyes are tired of looking at this glaring computer screen.  On the other hand I am so pissed off, that I must vent somehow.  After watching a few movies on the AMC network, I both am happy and sad.  I am happy because I feel some things that are familiar to me. That feeling comes from a variety of stimuli.  Beautiful cinematic images on the screen, effective musical underscoring, creative writing, and craftsman acting all move my emotions, especially when they occur simultaneously.  It is this magical combination that makes a successful film.  As I watched these classic movies from decades gone by, the overt reaction I had was sorrow.  How was I feeling sorrow at the experiencing of those artistic things I just mentioned?  It is because mostly they are extinct.  It seems I have lived long enough, a half a century, to be able to witness a true progression of history and art.  This progression, both a progression and extinction, has happened before.  Most notably the stylistic periods in European music represent a similar progression.  While I did not live in those times, broadly I do understand the changes.  Without living during those changes one never really will never know why and how music expired and excelled.  Certainly they were a direct correlation of the politics of the time.  Wouldn't it be nice to be able to travel back in time and understand how the Renaissance morphed into the Baroque or Rococo?  Still there is much to be understood in music history.  What I do know today is we are at a similar crossroads.  A specific period of American music history is over.  After watching these classic films on AMC blatantly it is obvious.  American music is and never will be the same.  We are on a downward spiral.  It both is disconcerting and completely disappointing to live in such a time.  I have devoted my life to the art of music, and to be stuck in the year 2014 is a nightmare.  At the age of fifty-two now I am able to look back at over half a century of life and observe.  My mojo no longer is active.  Fully I believe it still is potent, but with utterly and absolutely no impetus whatsoever to pursue music it is in seclusion.  It is in seclusion because no longer do I feel joy in the pursuit of music.  I feel loss.  I feel loss as I undoubtedly observe that American music irrefutably is on a downward spiral.  What has caused this decline?  After viewing several of these AMC classic films, it became glaringly obvious.  The marriage of music to drama or rather music to the human condition is over.  No longer it seems does the entertainment industry feel it is profitable to exploit this strong and magical union.  Everything falters with this decision.  Depth of character, interaction, drama, and catharsis all are are stranded on a digital blue screen of stasis.  Without a search and understanding of the human condition represented metaphorically through music, we are a much weaker race.  We are insensitive, selfish, and violent.  We are being deprived of our core human components without even knowing it.  The duality that served this exploration seems no longer to exist.  In musical terms the absence of the leitmotif leaves actors naked on their deserted islands.  Once a knowledgeable and skilled composer would aid the development of a plot and characters at an intimate level.  This intimacy was achieved because analog sound was analogous to analog film and analog emotion.  It was continuous.  It was not separated into manmade samples.  Analog energy is the epitome of God's energy.  It is powerful, continuous, broad, and expressive.  It has not been compressed into a rich man's capsule.  It is vibrant, alive, and free.  The frequencies of sound, visible light, and emotion are uninhibited.  Today that is not the case.  Today this humanity has been sacrificed for an artificial cyber existence.  It has failed.  All of the computer programming in the world cannot represent the beauty of nature.  Natural sound, natural light, and natural feeling can not be represented by digits, pixels, and decimals.  Compression is no the answer to the human condition, and it never has been.  Always it has been expansion.  Expansion of consciousness, expansion of awareness, and expansion of potential.  The twenty-first century only has brought stagnation in art.  The digital realm entered, existed, and failed.  No application, computer program, or operating system can simulate real life, yet as a populace it has been chosen.  It is cheaper.  It is easier.  The human condition is a remnant of its former self.  It is because our land is polluted.  The pristine canvas upon which analog beauty was created now is a poisonous, volatile, and almost fatal landscape.  The rich and powerful are content with social chaos as it only cements their hold on wealth and power.  They sit back and laugh as humans die.  We are in a new Dark Ages, and who knew?  

Hitting the Ground Running Each Morning

I barely can believe my ears.  What?  I said barely could I believe my ears.  What?  My ears.  Are they yelling?  No  Are they burning?  No.  I don't think anyone is talking about me.  My ears.  They are at rest for a change.  I mean a HUGE change.  Where I live each day when I am vaulted awake either it is a humming diesel-electric locomotive sitting on the tracks at 5:30 a.m., a strafing aircraft from a variety of sources, yard maintenance noise, garbage trucks, or barking dogs.  Clearly I have been able to hear them despite having had completely new vinyl windows and siding affixed to our sixty year old house.  What was the culprit?  The culprit was a little window-mounted air conditioner that sat in a window facing downtown Fayetteville.  Through its crevice came these annoying sounds.  It was multifold.  Not only did sound seem to penetrate through the very bowels of the machine itself, also it permeated the thin wood borders fashioned to seal the window shut.  Wood has a R insulation value of 1.  One.  Let me say it again.  One.  To aid the problem I had made styrofoam panels covered with plastic  that were the same size as the wood panels.  They did little good.  Today was the day I chose to remove this pesky noise conduit because the chilling temperatures of winter are upon us.  No longer did I need its back up temperature moderator.  I can open the other window and with a rather efficient hand-mounted dual propeller fan cool the room in a matter of minutes.  The air conditioner had to go.  Who knew the surprising result it would yield.  Today is the first day in many weeks I can look at the computer monitor and see the type clearly.  My all ready hindered eyesight is not being effected more by the waves of low frequency sound coming from CSX-T, the Norfolk and Southern, and the Abereen and Rockfish.  Secondly today is the first day I can hear the classical sounds coming from WCPE radio clearly and uninhibited.  I have been tweaking my antiquated stereo system for months, but until you limit that unwanted interfering infrasound the music will not be clear.  A better term is "unmodulated."  It is a joy, and only can I laugh at the rude dog across the street that barks at me in my closed garage.  I can laugh at the sounds of all those parking automobiles.  I can laugh at those antagonizing helicopters who seem to care little about who they disturb in the course of their work.  I have found from experience that all good things come to and end.  If you celebrate to pompously surely your neighbors will find some way to eliminate your newly found serenity.  I will not hold my breath, but I can say emphatically for two years my personal solace has been breached like a sleeping seven-year-old's buttocks.  Is life supposed to be this difficult?  

Land of the Giants

I'm not sure today what the sentiment is supposed to be like to return to your childhood home.  Recently one of my childhood homes became vacant for the first time since my parents sold it in l978.  It was liberating for me.  It was the first time I could drive up in our old driveway and see for myself how much the same or different my childhood home was.  Overall it was okay.  The seminal markers in the backyard were gone reminding me of a time when my father was in his heyday.  He had built a small log cabin in our other childhood home in Mocksville, North Carolina.  Our backyard was bordered by a small creek that flooded when it rained and then woods.  He felled trees from those woods, debarked them, and proceeded to build me sister and me a playhouse we would enjoy for years to come.  When he found a better job as the band director for Terry Sanford High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina the cabin moved with us.  (?)  How that happened I am not sure.  What I am sure of is how many extraordinary things my father did for me when we were young.  The second was the creation of a Lionel .027 gauge layout in his band room at that very school.  This was my Christmas present, which he built in its entirety before loading it in a rented U Haul trailer and hauling it to this very childhood home.  In the wee hours of the night it made its way out of that trailer and into the screened in porch that still is on the back of that very house.  It was an amazing feat.  Extraordinary.  Reflecting back upon these things it is a little easier to discover whence my talent came.  I can't remember it today.  I have lost whatever "mojo" I once had.  I don't think that entirely is true, but whatever it was it no longer is relevant to America in the year 2014.  For some reason I have arrived at a time in my life where I no longer seem to want the extraordinary.  Instead I want ordinary.  I want down to earth, mundane, almost boring roots in human reality.  I don't want what the current media is pitching.  I don't want want "Fear and Intimidation."  I don't want the "newest thing."  I don't want cutting edge technology.  I don't want new software.  I don't want a new phone.  I don't want a computer in a watch.  All of these things are useless and in due time will become extinct in proportion to their worth.  It is time America moved on from her smoke and mirrors campaign of trying to make money.  Moving money around for a living no longer is a viable option.  Wall Street sealed their own fate with that one.  I harp quite a bit about modern television, because when I grew up American television was a core component of American life.  The weekly television schedule provided a much needed structure in your entertainment life.  Not only did it entertain, it guided our culture.  The things we did, the way we dressed, and what we talked about highly were influenced by television.  Television was different then.  It was good and honest.  It was a reflection of our real lives that amazingly then were real.  We were living life.  We are not living life today.  We are existing.  The whole substructure of American life has been rendered moot.  Why?  The answer is public education.  Once America cared about her youth.  Fully we understood our youth would be the next generation that would lead America.  We educated and began to empower them.  We openly and willingly passed the reigns on to our next generation.  America today, like a ravenous, narcissistic, and immoral animal began feeding on her youth when the economy collapsed.  When the economy moved from family values to accumulated wealth for the rich, then America faltered.  A heel was kicked out one foot of America, and she has not stopped stumbling since.  Until the middle class and their education again becomes important to America, we will not change.  Making America's middle class a focus of attention will be difficult.  It will mean that the rich who are running the country now will have to take a back seat to the common American.  By taking that back seat fully they will understand that an investment is being made in the future of America's economy.  The needs and wants of Americans once again will become the infrastructure of America.  It will not focus on the slave owners.  It will not focus on the Communist leaders.  It will focus on America and her people.  What will need to happen for this to take place?  It is clear our current system of government is failing.  When Congress becomes so constipated that the President needs to evoke executive order to make progress, it is clear that this body of self serving hypocrites needs to be eradicated.  It is interesting that for the first time in my life, America has returned to a previous point in history.  There was a time when these wealthy lawmakers ruled America.  Trusts they were called.  They ruled with an iron hand.  Several extraordinary presidents changed this over the course of time.  Whether anyone knows it or not President Barak Obama with his Attorney General Eric Holder have made more strides against this great machine than any president in recent memory.  The culmination of this judicial juggernaut must be Bank of America's 16.65 billion dollar penalty for selling toxic mortgage-backed securities and other financial instruments leading up to the economic crisis.  The change in philosophy will not come from our federal government.  While Obama and his team are pioneering that fight, the reestablishment of our economy will have to come from those that are holding America's money.  Simply it has to move from dying hands into hands of honest people who once again are willing to invest in the future of America.  The recent generation of the wealthy who began feeding off of her children only can be represented by one image in my mind.  They are like hermaphrodites they posses the sexual organs of both male and female genders.  They and only they can satisfy themselves with no need of others.  This small contingency of rogue bacteria are extinct.  They have eaten all they can eaten with little to no regard for the rest of America.  They have not fertilized.  They have not rotated their crops.  They have not conserved.  Instead of sewing to reap their crops, only have they eaten of the fruit.  It is enlightening in my life to witness such a historical precedent.  While Viet Nam, Korea, the Dessert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom are notable conflicts, while America's attention was focused in the Middle East, extremists infiltrated our political, governmental, and financial systems covertly.  This is where the damage has taken place, and still is.  What will cause this shift in ideology?  The only plausible solution can be a coup.