Musical Soul and Its Pitfalls

There once was a time long long ago when I was a musician.  I can't remember it.  I can't remember it, because it is too painful to remember.  There once was a time long long ago, when I was good at music.  It was okay to be good at music.  Something changed. My entire existence was upset.  It took a long to time right it again, but I did eventually.  I had to travel.  I had to leave where I was and begin again.  I put distance in between what happened and what was going to happen.  I am not sure of what did happen.  Part of that is I chose to not remember, because when I do there is an immense amount of pain still.  Twenty years later I lied to get closure.  I accepted responsibility for callous and insensitive things I did.  I accepted responsibility for things I did not do and which caused me almost immortal pain.  It was the only way it seemed to receive closure.  My professional career and my personal life were at risk.  Both were disrupted.  My musical life sustained in tact, although no longer  was it joyous.  I had enough gumption to tough it out, even when this joy disappeared from making music.  It was difficult, and I suffered.  The personal side was even more difficult, and this hardship lasted four years.  I solved if finally by changing myself.  I changed the way I thought about things, and I changed the way I loved.  I forget this from time to time, and when I do this hardship returns.  I have it now.  Music now causes me pain.  Rather the sharing of my music causes me pain, because I am back in the place where this pain began and not around those who have inspired my new music.  It both is ironic and surprising to me that this is true.  Fuck!  Nothing has changed, here.  I have come to understand this is the plague of the American South.  While somewhere deep inside still I can muster images of southern gentility, mostly that has changed to a perception of control.  The same shit that is and was going on always will be going on.  Via the Confederacy and their slaves.  The people remain the same and things will remain the same.  If I wanted to progress, I had to move where there was opportunity.  Many others in American history have done the same.  Black slaves traveled up the Mississippi River to Chicago and then to Harlem in New York City.   You must move somewhere where there is a higher, equal, and more accommodating consciousness.  That was not here.  It is extremely painful that music still brings me pain, but I know why it brings me pain.  It brings me pain, because the two people who brought me into this world no longer have their lives of music.  The music that brought them both happiness all their years is gone.  As their sown seed I have discovered it is not possible to start anew in this absence of their musical lives.  Jesus says someone in your life must die to make way for you.  I do not necessarily believe that is one of your parents, but I know in this case that my parent's musical lives will have to die, before I ever will again receive musical happiness.  Their grief over losing what was crucial to them grossly overwhelms my desire to reap musical joy again.  It is the station of being a son.  "Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother" even if that means you sacrifice your chosen vocation.  It is difficult this sacrifice.  It is difficult, because I have unfinished work.  I have musical projects yet to complete, but the quintessential connection with this music lies in its expression.  It is my expression.  It is not my parents expression.  Their need for expression in their later years has become more important because it it becomes lessened.    My music necessarily  is not selfish and singular.  It includes many things.  Much of it is consequences from other people and places in the cruise industry.  It is a fusion of my own feelings mixed with perceptions, reactions, and thoughts about these things.  This is what makes the music possible.  This is what makes it rich.  The difficulty lies in the disconnection of these mixtures.  The majority of these influences were metaphors of people and places I met and visited while playing the piano on cruise ships.  I was lucky and chosen to find the perfect venue for the composition of these works.  There is no other musical studio better than a floating piano in the ocean.  This piano is immune from the negative connotations of American capitalism.  Only does this piano receive honest and direct communication from people and places.  It is a shame that my soul no longer is strong enough itself to mitigate my parent's honesty.  

Hillary Clinton, HAARP, and Adolescent Hormones

As I ponder the current state of American popular music and the history of radio, two things traditionally that have mutually coexisted, I have realized that radio intrinsically began as a racist entity.  While I don't think many people will disagree with that concept, like the definition of American jazz or swing music it could ignite a firestorm with Millenials.  They have proven, like other youthful generations, that when they do not know anything they sling mud in an attempt to get ahead.  I did it.  Probably it is a part of the adolescent mind which does not develop and thus mature until one's early twenties.  So they are saying.  We are instilled with a survival instinct that transcends social behaviors and religion.  We must fight.  Only as we mature and experience our own weaknesses and failures do we develop empathy and thus compassion.  What does this have to do with popular music or radio?  I have come to realize that it has a lot to do with each.  Music by nature is a product of popularity.  Is that really true?  I can't say for previous generations, but living in America certainly popular music has been linked directly with youth culture.  Its connection with adulthood is a more nebulous thing that shrinks in importance as people begin to settle down.  Why has radio been racist?  The answer is simple and lies in its definition.  Only low frequency radio waves can travel long distances.  These are difficult to produce, because they require an antenna similar in length to their own wavelengths.  Research began at a facility in Alaska which experimented with the creation of low frequency radio waves using the earth's atmostphere.  It will not be any time in the near future they will be licensing these newly produced radio waves to mobile telecommunication companies.  Or will it?  Let's hope Hillary does not win the presidency in 2016.  If she follows in Bill's footsteps, that exactly is what will happen.  For now radio wavelengths are relatively short and thus local.  Local is the operative word.  Why do we continue to see cell phone towers sprout from our native soil?  It is because telecommunications is a large part of the global economy, and still it is competitive.  Despite the inherent risks of microwave frequency radio radiation, these towers are surrounding us more and more each year.  Each ominous tower creates a "cell" of coverage for phone owners.  If you venture outside the cell, you loose your bars.  Lose my bars? "Captain, only recently did I make Lieutenant.  I'll do anything to keep my bars."  Apparently this is the sentiment of the human race.  Nothing is more important than their cell phone coverage.  Until human beings realize the danger of this radiation, like the burning of fossil fuels, and begin to wean themselves from it the problem will continue.  In the meantime irresponsible companies will continue to produce the technology to satisfy the demand.  Radio and cellular communications bear no resemblance in my mind, except that they both use fairly short and thus "local" wavelengths.  Radio since its inception for popular use has been local.  Only HAM operators have graduated to a level of radio useage that becomes international.  Local means what?  In pop culture local often means indigenous or native.  Have these terms developed a negative connotation through history?  It is possible, and a slew of pop culture films and music deal with this issue.  Nothing could be more symbolic than Leonard Bernstein's musical "West Side Story."  The feud between the Sharks and the Jets was portrayed as racial in the story.  As they characters grew and matured they developed an awareness greater than racial boundaries.  Have we developed beyond this in America?  Radio has not helped, because of its reliance upon local populaces for its sustenance.  If commmodities have to choose between their own liquidity or crossing racial boundaries, you can imagine which they chose?  Popular music does the same thing.  If given a choice between staying alive or educating, it will choose to stay alive.  Just as adolescents know no better, neither it seems does radio or pop music.  Isn't there are way to remain commercially viable and still develop and maintain mature themes?  Must adolescence and its relating hormonal surges continue to be exploited by capitalist America?  

Idiot Television

The renaissance of the music industry never will happen until we get the trash television off the air.  I can't watch prime time television.  Maybe it's because I am an adult.  Maybe it's because I am a musician.  First I was a pianist.  My father was a jazz stylist on piano as well as being an exemplary band director.  He sang tenor in the Episcopal choir exercising his skill in sight singing each and every week.  He played all of the instruments and taught them.  I wanted to play the piano, because of my father and his musical talent.  He was an exemplary musician.  Not many of them exist anymore.  Another generation of talented musicians, and I mean authentic musicians, have left this earth.  They are shoes too large to fill.  They are shoes too large to fill, because today we have no realization of the depth of the field of music and no connection with its star purveyors.  The same thing has occurred in American history, but I never lived through it.  I didn't experience the death of jazz music at the behest of rock 'n' roll.  I read about jazz musicians dying in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.  I did experience the decline of the "rock star," but today many of those bands still tour.  Through the Billboard Top 100 I was able to experience the connection between early country music and swing.  None of these things while impactful upon American popular culture can compare to the decline of the jazz artist.  This decline of the jazz artist has effected every aspect of the commercial music industry.  Jazz musicians by nature are more intelligent than other musicians.  Classically trained musicians are similar, but there exists a feud between them.  I'm not sure if this feud still exists today.  I would think not, because jazz music has experienced a slow death.  Jazz and its significance to American culture has been downplayed to prop up what has become a hollow shell of American popular music.  It is simple.  As I sit here at my Macintosh computer and listen to AM Gold 1969, it is remarkably apparent that a once thriving music industry has been reduced to rubble.  As it is simple, there is a simple explanation.  Talent once used to provide the musical product.  Talent, an often misunderstood term, bridged all musical gaps, provided a tangible meaningful musical product, and ensured commercial success.  How?  Talent is artistry.  Artistry, another often misunderstood term, means a thing of such quality and integrity it stands the test of time.  In today's America we do not use such terms.  Honor.  Code. Loyalty.  I am not talking about the Marine Corp.  I am talking about the field of music.  Not only am I talking about the field of music, I am talking about artistry.  I am talking about music done at the level of art.  There was a time in American history not that long ago where a majority of the music was artistic.  It was the one thing that ensured its commercial success.  Today the hollow shell of our music industry relies upon spin and hype to market itself.  I cannot even use the worlds market and sell interchangeably, because this industry is not the same as it was a decade ago.  It like the rest of America no longer is honest and sincere.  Maybe it is passé to be such things.  Maybe with the existence of ISIL, ISIS, and beheadings it is naive to produce music of Christian integrity.  Maybe such terrorism demands that we adopt a reflective barbaric and uncompassionate attitude towards life.  The world will not sustain if we do.  Honesty of expression is the only element that can transcend evil.  It is possible the generation of the millennium don't question these issues.  They know no better.  Time/Life in particular have not made America's musical history an available commodity.  Once we heard this songbook for free reinforced every day on our radios.  It was a large part of our existence.  This no longer is true.  There are many reasons why.  One is today no one has much to say about things.  The last musical artist I can remember who had something to say and thus sing about was Jewel.  Whenever country music sold out that was the last straw for the music industry.  The one discipline of the music industry which remained true to themselves for so long gave up the fight.  It no longer was in vogue to be sad about your life's experiences.  Instead we just party like there's no tomorrow.  The world can't survive if humanity choses this option.  There is a bit of melancholy involved, because it is obvious today's wanna be pop stars have no inclination even to understand what their job is.  They are clueless.  Without a viable academic music education the resources are just no available anymore.  As an academically-trained musician systematically I have collected a catalog of pedagogical materials including recordings of music.  While my recorded anthology is far from complete, it covers most of what would be pop musicians should hear to even attempt their chosen vocation.  When I feel musically unsatisfied which is most of the time, I appreciate what I have.  Upon sampling from it this evening, it starkly is apparent that we are at yet another juncture.  The "voice" is dead.  The renaissance of the music industry never will happen until we get the trash television off the air.  It is not possible to replace an art form with hopes and dreams.  

Diversity, Multi-Culturalism, and Globalism in Radio

Radio has been dead for some time.  It had to die to make way for the new thing.  Those tried and true AM and FM frequencies had to bow their humble heads and become martyrs for that new thing.  All that has been accomplished in the world because of radio miraculously has forfeited its game of life.  Hit records, recording stars, and grass roots entertainment just stepped aside to make way for that new thing.  Did they ask a few questions?  Did they assemble the board of directors and devise a new business model?  Did they assess the value of their contribution to the world?  No.  They just stepped aside and selfishly made way for that new thing.  That new thing.  A telephone, the selfishness of the human being laid right out there in all of its leprosy.  "I would rather talk to my friends than listen to hit music for free.   I would rather take pictures of my genitals than listen to hit music for free.  I would rather check my E-Mail in the car than listen to hit music for free.  Shouldn't we be able to download hit music for free on the computer?"  Radio never has been diverse.  Easily we could say radio personified racism.  Never were there radio stations that played across racial lines, or were there?  Oh yes.  Then there was Motown.  Berry Gordy figured out how to do this.  He figured out how to sell black music to Elvis fans using the trappings of white America.  Radio never has been diverse.  Radio has been an epitome of the racial inequality inherent in our genetics.  It is surprising to me that no one figured this out and tried to change it.  Was it because the Mason Dixon line was not mobile?  Was it because America was so routed in racism that we could not dispense with our own petty bias to become enriched as human beings?  Is it because as pundit are saying now we are not divided by race, we are divided by tribe?  I find it stifling listening to one style of music continuously.  Variety is the spice of life.  Why would we only want slow songs at our wedding reception?  Why would we only want fast songs?  Why would we only want white songs?  Is it possible that the cruise industry is responsible for real diversity?  Is it possible that the practice of vacationing in international waters visiting different countries with different racial make ups has enlightened humanity?  If you speak with anyone that cruises, they will say yes.  They will tell you with the utmost glee about the seventy nationalities of employees working together to make your cruise memorable.  I agree.  I have worked in the cruise industry since 9/11.  I picked the right time.  What I never pondered was the pain and disappointment of reentry.  

It Doesn't Have to be All or Nothing in a Democracy

America annoys me.  I tolerate her the way an irate parent tolerates their misbehaving child.  Why do I have to discipline my country every second of my waking life?  Evidently the sensibility of America's "West" still is at play, and as it should be.  This is one fundamental that has sustained the test of time in America's history.  The difference between good and evil now is so spun and thus obscured, it is difficult to discern truth from Newspeak from the "establishment."  I will begin to substitute the term "establishment" for media.  By media I mean television, radio, the internet, newspapers, and magazines.  All of these venues have succumbed to an overt political bias, possibly because of by whom they are owned.  No longer are they neutral.  No longer harmlessly do they seek to inform and entertain.  Today media is one large propaganda machine.  This is an iconic revelation, and one that will emerge in history books when America decides to cleanse this infected wound.  It will take time.  America annoys me.  She annoys me, because we are not on the level.  We are full of contempt and hatred.  We are recalcitrant without knowing against what or whom we are rebelling.  We show the hallmark symptoms of being psychologically disturbed.  I believe this exactly is how the "establishment" wants it.  Gone is a level playing field.  Gone is the existence of the American Dream.  Gone is the true practice of Christianity except in ridiculously anachronistic traditions which promulgate our continued naivety and ignorance of this truth.  In Fayettenam the populace flocks to these bible compounds thinking in some way they will be protected from this ensuing reality.  The revolution has begun, and it is not for the people.   Burying one's head in is not a viable plan but most do it.   While I believe in God I do not support organized religion.  In Fayettenam it is a metaphor for "tax deduction."  Organized religion using its political status as a means of economic fortitude should suggest that things are awry.  If the common man cannot make an earnest living in our chosen socioeconomic system, then something is wrong. Ironically the mafia understood this problem clearly, and in an attempt to harvest their own American Dream devised their own system of economic reward.  Who's to say that it wasn't merited?  Organized crime.  With the sheer amount of corruption in American commerce and government, no one is looking out for the common man except the Godfather.  America annoys me because her attention span is that of a chimpanzee.  We are insulted minute by minute by the suggestion that we have learned nothing from our schooling, that we cannot see past tomorrow, and that we care for nothing other than immediate gratification.  It is these things, or the establishment  is marketing themselves to stoners.  Starkly it is evident that the psychological health of America has been compromised.  It began over a decade ago with the mainstream emergence of ADD.  While it is not reported upon anymore [sic] neither is anything of any significance to the well-being of the American population.  The establishment slowly and secretly has converted itself into one large undulating propaganda machine.  It is so large, that I have trouble finding any evidence of real truth anywhere.  We are on our own.  Day by day I am amassing the tenacity to, "Just turn it off."  Barbara Bush said, "Just say no."  I want to, "Just turn it off."  America annoys me not because she is childish.  She annoys me because of her ridiculous, "Do or die" sentiment concerning everything; "All or nothing" as the songs would tell you.  It does not and should not be this way.  Modern, temperate, and mature populaces do not choose Professional Wrestling as their model.  Modern, temperate, mature populaces invest in their people, their infrastructure, and their governance as a means of sustenance.  If you want something to remain, then you do not abuse it.  If you care about something, then you respect it.  If you love something, then you treat it with love, not contempt.  We have become a contemptuous society, because American marauders have infiltrated our society and planted seeds of Communism, not Socialism.  The tenants of Socialism, contrary to American understanding, are positive despite how our establishment screams about them.  This is an example of their spin.  Compared to our current socioeconomic system, socialism is a walk in the park.  Socialism at its core seeks to maintain the well-being of the populace.  It does not seek to empower the few.  Socialism at its core seeks to maintain moderation, not a campaign of fear and intimidation.  America annoys me, because she is being exclusionary.  The mainstream of American intelligence is being undermined by an immature, egocentric, grandstanding child.  This child would have you believe that tomorrow will be your last day, if you do not believe what it is saying.  It would have you believe that a war is raging outside your door, and your survival relies upon your believing what it says.  Moderation.   Only could it be that the American art form of Rock 'n' Roll  has contributed to this sensationalism.  I can think of no other commodity that would champion the slogan, "Take no prisoners" as it motto.  I have a friend who is a musician, and we disagree on one point.  For some reason he believes all musical artists want to sell a million records and become a star.  I disagree.  I am a musical artist, and never have I wanted to sell a million records or become a star.  Nothing could be further from my mind.  Contrarily I would like to have my music be  available to the public for their consideration.  That is all.  It is not, "Do or Die."  It is not, "All or Nothing."  It is not, "Take no Prisoners."  Why would it be?  The traditional but now defunct platform of capitalism embraced competition.  It saw a competitive market place as system for motivating non-performing products, inspiring innovation, and fostering a respectful work force.  Was it Microsoft with its forced bundling of Internet Explorer with their Windows operating system that set the example for this cut throat style of commerce?  Bill Gates is one of the richest men in the world.  Has that helped America?  No.  It only has made him rich.  It has not helped our infrastructure, our marketplace, or the education of our youth.  Capitalism in this circumstance failed.  Everything in America today seems like it is all or nothing.  There can be no finer example of this than the craft and art of music.  For lack of no viable alternative I listen to WCPE.  It is the only radio station that does not drip with propaganda.  Even after a continued week's worth of listening its inevitable propaganda emerges.  We do not live in the Classic Era.  We do not live in an era of royalty and court.  We do however live in a class system, and without the presence of jazz music to counter this one-sided presence, I find myself tiring of the staid and square rhythms of classical music.  It does not swing.  Without diverging into a heated argument on the definition of swing music, only can I say that in fifty-two years of existence on this earth that swing rhythm is the toil of man waiting for the response of God.  As the slave hits the earth with his hoe, patiently and diligently he waits for the reciprocative rebound of God's hand.  If only he were to strike the earth in livid dissent of his captivity, then nowhere would there be a place for God's consignment.  Swing was born of pure necessity, the necessity of God's existence and love.  Without God there is no swing rhythm, and thus today America is a swing-less land.  Jazz conspicuously is absent in America, and I find it fully insulting that a performance by Wynton Marsalis's band at a jazz festival is considered its only evidence.  Jazz is the voice of man in God's existence.  The reason why it no longer exists in America is twofold.  Again without diverging into a heated argument on the definition of jazz music, easily it can be said that jazz music is pure.  It is pure, because there is no middle man.  Its voice, its message, and it resulting emotional response are pure.  They emerge in tact, born, and functioning from their inception.  There is no middle man in the definition of slavery.  This is what gives jazz its remarkable power. While a classical contemporary classical composer myself, I tire at the sound of orchestra music over time.  There are times in my life, when I rather would not listen to sixty trained musicians in a concert hall led by a conductor.  It can be pretentious.  There are middle men in the production of this music, and sometimes musically intimacy is what I seek.  Sometimes I want the music I hear and feel to be more pure.  How is this possible?  How could a symphony orchestra playing a work of art not be considered pure?  It is pure, but it may not be intimate.  Often it is intimate, but how intimate can it be with sixty musicians, a concert hall, and a conductor?  Jazz music solves this problem.  The music is pure and intimate, because often it emerges directly from its creator.  There is no middle man.  The message, the voice, and the emotional intent come from the same source, one artist.  Jazz music for this reason has been at the forefront of America's music scene since its inception, until now.  America annoys me, because a generation of selfish, egocentric, recalcitrant children think they deserve something.  They think they deserve something, because daddy's  money always entitles.  In stark reality they do not deserve to stand in the stream of piss of a real jazz musician.  

On Bruce Jenner

Nothing could substantiate the amateur, trivial, and tabloid nature of America's mainstream media better than Bruce Jenner.  Foremost the public must remind themselves the second most widely recognized personality today is not on the level.  Jenner's transition, while possibly sincere to him, is the perfect epitome of America's current news system.  It is not real news.  It is the other thing.  Jenner's metamorphosis ultimately satisfies all of the requirements of the "other thing" without being real news.  It is the perfect platform for him publicly to voice his self-hatred and inability to manage the aging of a fallen star.  He is not the only egomaniac ferverently searching for a new awakening.  There are many in Hollywood.  Not that many would take it to such an extreme.  His self loathing must be substantial.  Not only does he thrust himself back into the public eye as a sixty-five year old retired athlete, he catapults himself artificially into the hearts of the gullible.  He is a saving grace.  He is a torch.  Before he was nothing.  That was an effective plan.  Many will fall for his ploy.  Vanity Fair gets their provocative cover story and photograph.  The Kardashians reap yet another dose of unmerited fame.  Jenner's ego is quieted finally.  Only can I laugh when the image of Caitlin Jenner covers the screen.  Am I the only one laughing?  Secretly underneath those recently re-assigned genitals someone is laughing all the way to the bank.  

The Book of Job

Today music is a mystery to me.  Although I have studied it all my life, today music is a mystery to me.  I feel there should be some biblical implication in losing an understanding of one's own chosen vocation.  Is it common for people to reach half a century in age and then forget the previous century?  Maybe it's just a bad memory or too much pot, but I don't smoke pot.  As for my memory, well I can't remember.  I have had ups and downs with it.  Your memory determines your knowledge and thus your academic progress.  When I am focused, I remember fine.  When I am stressed, misguided, and unmotivated I do not remember so well.  Certain things we choose to forget.  It is essential to survival.  If we remembered each and every thing that happened to us, we would be basket cases.  There are specific things I chose to forget, and lately it has been music.  When music began causing me pain, I chose to forget it.  There is no Goddamn reason music should cause anyone pain, but it does.  I had lunch with a former percussionist from the Fayetteville Symphony.  He told me of a frightening performance during the Christmas season where the orchestra bells prominently were featured.  He could not play the written part up to speed, so he practiced it.  Even with the practice he was not capable of playing the part at the tempo indicated by the composer.  The conductor has some say in how fast a particular work will be played, so this particular conductor assured Dale that he would not take the piece at full tempo.  He would slow it down enough so that Dale could articulate the part.  During the performance not only did the conductor go back on his word, the lights went down at the beginning of the concert and a spotlight appeared on Dale's orchestra bells.  His hand was shaking so violently from fear and nervousness, he could not strike the metal bells with his mallet.  What was the result?  From the audiences point-of-view who is to know?  Obviously the part did not get played accurately, but there was drama.  Something else contrary to what the composer intended was injected into this simple performance of a Christmas arrangement.  Was it fair?  Was it fair for the conductor to lie to Dale and tell him ahead of time that he would not be humiliated because he could not play the part up to tempo?  Did the conductor forget his agreement with Dale and simply take the piece at its decided tempo?  In either case negative thoughts were created during the process.  Many young piano students have stage fright.  They walk to the piano at their first recital and simply forget what they are supposed to play.  They sit silently at the piano as the seconds tick by.  It is uncomfortable, because music is suppose to occur.  Crippling neurosis has occurred for the same reason.  It is not common knowledge Van Cliburn opted out of a career touring playing the piano.  He could not handle the pressure.  Pressure. It would seem there is a stigmata in existence related to classical music.  There is a stigmata attached to popular music.  Music is a vocabulary as deep as verbal human language.  In certain ways it communicates more effectively than speech.  Upon listening to people talk today, this is not surprising.  Just as we use a small fraction of our brain, we use a small fraction of the capabilities of the spoken English language.  It is not in vogue.  Music is not in vogue.  Art is not in vogue.  Fashion is not in vogue.  Wireless telephones are in vogue.  Texting is in vogue and is killing people.  Apps are in vogue.  The entire scope of American culture has been reduced to a handheld microwave communications device.  Remarkably communication is at a minimum.  Mother Goose came in and re-wrote American culture so that a two year old could understand.  I have chosen to forget, because everything in American culture that was of meaning conspicuously is absent.  For me the most consequential is music.  Music.  Music is personal communication.  It is personal expression, yet we as Americans must have nothing to communicate.  In our recent history we chose to disagree with the War in Viet nam.  We chose to have an opinion about civil rights.  We chose to question authority.  We chose to enable ourselves with knowledge and thus power.  I am beginning to believe that there is no such thing as pleasure and pain anymore. Everything is one big blur, so we are not compelled to seek the truth.  My biggest fear is not that I will die a painful tormented death.  I have dealt with pain in my life, both physical and psychological.  Psychological pain for me is far more potent.  Something that insists you will not find happiness in your life is a worthy adversary.  It is something to be feared and thus conquered. Eliminating God is a step in this direction.  I chose to forget music, because it has stepped in this direction.  Everything about music that is worthwhile, tangible, and good is gone.  Music used to be the soapbox for the human soul, yet the human soul is extinct.  We have no philosophy.  We have no desires.  We have no dreams.  We have no secrets.  If we did, then there would be music.  There would be music of all sorts.  There would be reggae.  There would be groovy island music that speaks of civil injustice.  There would be blues.  There would be gut bucket music that provides affirmation in the face of adversity.   There would be funk.  There would be music that exorcises the demons from our souls.  There would be jazz.  There would be music that personifies human love and romance.  Evidently we have nothing to say as a culture.  We watch crime shows, we play violent video games, and we eat.  I chose to forget music.  

The Hare Scrambles

So far I have written two blog posts with the phrase "Hare Scrambles" in their titles.  I am wondering if anyone today in America knows what a Hare Scrambles is?  Does it have anything to do with the definition of the word  "is?"  Also I am wondering if anyone thinks it is odd that we heard the phrase, "I want to eat her pussy," in a local production of "Avenue Q?"  After seeing this musical I was energized.  It was rife with talent.  Not only were there human actors/singers, there were puppets being controlled by these same people.  I have lost my zest for Avenue Q after a few weeks, and evidently like good film it doesn't stick in your mind....  Well.  It was not unusual to hear this phrase on stage in a Broadway musical, because it was spoken in jest.  It was sung by a puppet exploring his own homosexuality.  The hare scrambles on the other hand is a much more real thing.  Anyone?  Bueller?  I feel very alone in the world.  I have few skateboarding buddies.  I have few motorcycle buddies, except the fellow riders I see on the streets of Fayettenam when I joyride around town.  Often they greet me with a traditional downward pointing salute with their clutch hand as the pass.  It is a gesture found by groundsmen on aircraft carriers in the Pacific.  I find it mildly amusing and wholly satisfying to know that all social injustice in life for just an instant is frozen in time, and all that is important is the camaraderie among fellow motorcycle riders.  It is transcendent.  Deep down I wish that I had more motorcycle riding friends that would accompany me to the ATV Park in Elizabethtown.  I enjoy riding by myself in the dirt in the Cape Fear River Basin, but a few "chase" buddies would be more fun.  Oh well.  Instead I do the Hare Scrambles.  Bueller?  Anyone?  Motorcycle riding is unusual.  Many people get killed doing it.  If you are a safe and conscientious rider, you will live and you will experience great anti gravitational fun.  It is not that different from skating or surfing.  (slight pause to observe the black ant scurry across my Hewlett Packard computer monitor)  I like to challenge myself, although I am an experienced motorcyclist.  Now it is second nature to me.  I have a finely tuned dirt machine, and she responds to my every sensibility while navigating the diverse terrain of southeastern North Carolina.  The most challenging is sand.  We have sand in our back yard soon to be filled with varying varieties of cacti.  Sand under your tires (or in your shoes) can be annoying.  (black ant squashed)  The key to navigating sand is speed.  If you are traveling too slowly, your front wheel will loose traction and just waffle.  If you are going fast enough you will cut through the sand and slide as if you were on ice.  This means that your balance must be good, and that you must know how to control the bike in such terrain.  It is a challenge.  It is a far greater challenge when the path upon which you are traveling is about four feet wide, is steeped in sharp turns, and has moguls.  Anyone?  Bueller?  That is what the hare scrambles is.  I found myself ensconced in a hare scrambles by accident one afternoon at the ATV park in Elizabethtown, North Carolina.  Luckily I am a skilled enough rider that it was great fun.  I'm not sure many people in America are aware of the challenge of the "Hare Scrambles."    

The Hare Scrables and Real Life Survival

It's a little disconcerting looking down and seeing a stitched wound on your belly.  It reminds me of war time, but never have I fought in a war.  Fighting in some way is not far from my sensibilities, because when I dream almost always I dream in vivid, stark, realistic pictures of my own survival.  There is a plot, a scenario, often that lands me squarely on the ground of a foreign domestic community that requires me to operate at my political best.  I learned politics while working for the cruise lines.  It would have been nice if I had inherited this knowledge, because it would have come in handy attending both Ramsey Street Elementary School and Washington Drive Junior High School.  Each were predominantly black schools in Fayetteville, and the Fayettevillel City school system only recently had become racially integrated.  I remember exactly when the first black children were "bussed" across town to Belvedere Elementary School which later was renamed Margaret Willis.  The children were chocolate chips.  They dotted the otherwise vanilla ice cream of our school.  When I was bussed to Ramsey Street and later Washington Drive, I had no idea of the reason why.  It was because our neighborhood of Greenwood Homes, behind Eutaw Shopping Center, was a stone's throw from them.  If one flew as the crow flew, it only would take a few minutes to travel from this neighborhood to either of these schools.  The same was true of E.E. Smith Senior High School, where my mother taught home economics.  Only recently have I discovered this.  While embarking upon a leisurely Sunday afternoon motorcycle drive on my Honda CB-250, I decided to explore this line of demarkation between white and black Fayetteville.  It not only is delineated by the local water shed,  also more traditionally it is delineated by railroad tracks like most southern towns.  You have heard the phrase, "The wrong side of the tracks."  Google Satellite is indispensable for research.  Just as the internet began as a network of academic data bases for the advancement of nuclear science, our world wide web still remains a convenient and far reaching institution for the advancement of knowledge.  I wish American society would reinforce this concept.  After moving back to Fayetteville after playing piano on ships for over a decade, I became fascinated with the city planning of a town named after the Marquis de Lafayette.  It is intriguing to map the rolling neighborhoods of Fayettenam, as they unfold naturally along the the preexistent water shed.  This line of demarkation between Greenwood Homes and Murchison Road is both the CSX-T railroad spur servicing Fort Bragg and Little Cross Creek.  Little Cross Creek is a tributary of Glenville Lake, and all of its surrounding landscape is dense foliage.  It only was my clever junior high school buddies who figured this out back in the day.  While each day as I sat on the school bus tooling down Pamalee Drive I took in the scenery, it only was now after using Google Satellite that I made this discovery.  When I was bussed to Ramsey Street, it was not of such consequences to me.  When you are a child, it would seem race was not such an issue.  I was not bullied, and I had acceptance because my sister also was attending this school.  The teachers seemed to know me all ready.  I was the president of my fourth grade class, and I made straight A's on my last report card in sixth grade under Mrs. Smith.  Washington Drive Junior High School on the other hand was a nightmare.  When we started school in this ghetto neighborhood, I had no friends of which to speak.  Each day on her way to E.E. Smith my mother would drop me off on the school ground early in the morning.  I knew no one.  There were gangs of people standing around both black and white.  I felt alienated, and my only recourse was to offer another neighborhood friend a ride to school with us each day.  He was my cover, and it worked for the most part.  I tried to work my way into a cool clique, but they would not have me.  It took many months before I became friends with a few guys in one of these cliques.  It happened, because I was both smart and artistic.  It didn't hurt, that I all ready was a good musician giving me a head start playing trumpet in the school band.  I lived in fear for the majority of the two years I spent at "Drive."  I was bullied regularly, and unlike the members of the cool cliques I did not yet possess political skills that enabled me to disappear into the crowd.  Often I heard, "Hey boy, give me some money."  I heard the rumor that Steve Crumbly was going to kick my ass after band.  It didn't happen.  I had a large, sharp, metal desk bolt whizz past my ear during homeroom.  It was thrown by a member of the Lee family resembling the albino thug in the film "The Firm."  It was frightening, because how were we to know its intent?  Certainly a large bolt hurling at high velocity could have caused irreparable harm to my head.  I made a mental note of it and continued with my tortured junior high school life.  For the most part I was afraid.  My subconscious dreams today allow me to solve these issues remaining both self-sufficient and alive.  My dreams often encapsulate an entire plot.  The most interesting involved the mafia in Columbus, Ohio and their insistence I skipped town with a satchel full of their money.  I didn't skip town.  I wrecked my white Toyota Tercel wagon driving too fast through the winding curves of North Columbus ending up at Duke University Hospital a year later.  I awoke fully fixed surgeries and all, but the mob insisted that the statute of limitations on their case were moot as soon as I set foot back in Cowtown.  It became my political directive to keep them at bay (since I didn't have their money) and to continue with my musical career.  As in all of my dreams I have weapons of my own purchasing, but I know first and foremost the way to succeed in life is to not make waves.  I do not antagonize local yocals, I attempt be their friends, but at the same time I thwart their advances lawlessly against me.  It is a more interesting existence than when I wake up.  

Avoiding the B.S.

With a bit of refection I will admit my sole purpose for watching television is emotional fulfillment.  At one time in America it would have been an agreed upon consensus that frequenting the local movie theater served the same purpose, emotional fulfillment. The notion is not liberal.  It is not conservative.  It is not Libertarian.  It is human.  All human beings need emotional fulfillment.  Without it we resort to mass murder.  We in America have watched it unfold.  Those distraught, ignored, and unfulfilled citizens eerily have resorted to premeditated mass murder often ending with the termination of their own tormented lives.  Is it so much to ask our society to acknowledge and attempt to provide emotional fulfillment for its citizens?  Well, that is a bit much to ask Republicans.  Deprivation has become a major tool in controlling America's citizens and consequently collecting their money.  Today this is how wealth is accumulated.  It seems incorrigible, and it must stop.  Republicans are not interested in educating the people nor giving them entitlements but not without good reason.  Traditionally there has been a cross-section of American society that have stumbled in their pursuit of the American Dream.  In all probability it began during the Slave Era.  Upon finally being released from what became unlawful private indentured servitude  some Negros may not have been prepared for the task of earning a living in the white man's America.  In either case Abraham Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation" was instrumental in establishing the civil rights movement in America.  Hundreds of thousands of lives were lost fighting for this cause during the Civil War.  It was a heinous time for President Lincoln, and while America has struggled in subsequent decades I'm not sure any later social tenet could begin to attempt to usurp this loss of life on native soil. There were other incidents in America's history, and they include the Battle of the Alamo where all Texian defenders were killed by Mexican troops under the command of President General Antonio Lopez.  This siege is more reflective of the Revolutionary War, because it was a result of America's domestic Imperialism in its Southwest.  Similarly the Battle of Wounded Knee at the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota better represents racial atrocity in early America.  Controlling specific tribes in society always has been paramount in politics in America.  If one looks closely it always has been paramount in almost every country in the world.  It would be interesting to examine the religious nature of these international exceptions.  Today in America one cannot adopt any opinion without the political opposition immediately practicing villainy slandering the would be orator.  Public speaking, like many lost disciplines of historical American life, requires finesse, eloquence, and intellect.  You would not know it today, and this is why political opponents so easily smear public opinion.  The effective lobbyists in America are being employed by the Right to confuse the Left.  What an incredible waste of resources and a disservice to America.  It provides wealth to its purveyors, and this is why Capitalism is not good.  It used to be good.  It used to be good when Republicans did not govern and control America.  I knew the minute I graduated from college that my American Dream merely was a pipe dream.  Without brown-nosing these people, my dreams had no viable avenue to follow.  It helped to move out of the American South to the Midwest.  Here I found a more level playing field and a stark lack of classicism rooted in the American South.  Whether my viewpoint represents the majority of America today I am not sure.  It could be moving back to the South I am being overwhelmed by a continuance of the social habits I began to loathe in the late l980's.  It is possible things are different elsewhere, and I am sure of it.  There must be a viable reason I am being asked to vet these civil injustices.  Perfectly I can understand Governor Pat McCrory's desire to limit abortion in North Carolina.  While I do understand that the unprepared Negro still abounds here, ultimately it is the responsibility of the individual not to contribute to overpopulation.  I learned this responsibility in high school, and it was important to my daily existence as an adolescent.  I am in control of my own sexual desires, and consequently I make a decision not to procreate.  Others it seems defer their sexual responsibility to satan and cannot establish control their reproductive system.  If one allows one's self to become pregnant, I feel the state or the nation hold no accountability.  Only could they choose to entitle if the greater good was at stake.  Often the cards fall this way.  We divest our own American citizens of their human responsibilities to control them.  Thus we have raised a herd of cattle, which we control by depriving them of their God-given rights.  The paradox is attempting to diminish human behavior to that of cattle offers severe consequences.  We are a recalcitrant species.  God hard wired us to be human and humanity is a core component of God.  I have to remind myself of this often.  While we may possess a lofty and separated opinion of God, He is like us.  Everything once that was important to us as human beings also is paramount to God.  God came to earth to fulfill humanity.  He came to earth to offer us emotional fulfillment.  Because God now is on our fringes being R-U-N-N-O-F-T by Republican bullies our emotional fulfillment is at an all time low.  Without this simple yet powerfully intimate process, human beings have taken to the streets with their weapons of mass destruction and have begun protesting.  It is a shame countless American souls must be sacrificed for the awareness of this precept.  

It's a Bug's Life

All I can assume is we are getting smaller and smaller.  We are flitting around like crazed manic insects.  Maybe insects are not crazed or manic, but take what should be a human being and put them in a bugs body.  Things go faster.  Craze and mania.  Things are going so fast the the mind has no time to think.  There is little thought.  Only there is instinctive behavior.  Turn on the television. This is what you will see.  What you will see are infomercials.  When you turn on the television I will bet nine and one half times out of ten you will be viewing a childlike, inane, meaningless attempt to sell soap.  That is what television is today, selling soap.  Television always has had to sell soap to make a living, but selling the soap never became the purpose of television.  Now it is, or so it seems.  The childlike, inane, meaningless commercials fail on multiple levels.  Occasionally I will watch them simply as a test to see if I might buy their product.  In most cases the product they are selling is not well represented by the proceeding animation.  First there is the ukelele music.  Tiny Tim is hiding somewhere backstage strumming on that infernal miniature guitar.  "Tip toe, through the tulips...."  Not that ukelele music is bad.  In the proper context this instrument of Hawaiian origin can be very relaxing.  Imagine scantily clad women swaying to the hula dance.  NOT.  By the way the reason I am using the word NOT, is because late night show host James Corden issued a proclamation that we were bringing the word back into pop culture usage.  NOT!  As soon as I hear the ukelele music I know it is going to be a terrible commercial.  No four-stringed Hawaiian guitar is going to convince me to buy anything except possibly a ticket to Honolulu to see Don Ho.  (Is he still alive?)  I love the sound of Hawaiian music, as long as it is not combined with American country music.  That is a formula for disaster.  Just listen to Delores Park on a cruise.  In particular the Hawaiian slide guitar has a very distinctive and expressive sound.  This or the ukelele are not going to convince me to buy soap.  It is ironic America is so far behind in the curve in television advertising with "Mad Men" airing on AMC.  Here is a television series chronicling the profession of advertising in the l950's in America, and flip the channel and you are in Disneyland for drop outs.  That must be for what televisions is geared.  Stoners.  Listening to Hawaiian music through a bug's eyes attempting to entice you to buy soap.  We must be a fucked up nation.  On the other hand instead of disguising cures for cancer, we could intelligently describe a product and its intent to the potential user.  There is a formula for underscoring dialog in television and film, and it does not use ukelele music nor does it use jungle drums.  These are cliches of the millennium, and they are not even good ones.  In fact they have no basis in any musical concept for underscoring dialog or action.  Simply they are a plain failure.  Still turn on the television or watch a movie trailer and you will hear ukelele music and the same jungle drum cue over and over and over.  Not too original, but then again America is not original anymore.  We are cheap.  We are childish.  We are inane, and we are meaningless.  

The Hare Scrambles and Avenue Q

Fayetteville is a conservative town.  The word conservative in this context is a dichotomy.  Fayetteville is a community which sees fit to ban bicycles from its historical district downtown.  Fayetteville is a community which sees fit to tear down a skateboard tree because evidently it is in violation of the sign ordinance.  Fayetteville is a community which sees fit not to enforce citywide speed limits, especially in areas of high pedestrian traffic such as Hamount Hill.  Fayetteville is a community which has spent millions of dollars on downtown renovation yet cannot seem to find revenue to fund Parks and Recreation.  There is no public skateboard park.  There only is one public pool, and it is beside Fayetteville State University.  Not all residents of Fayetteville would feel comfortable frequenting this facilty.  Fayetteville is a community which built a Botanical Garden, yet the people that patron it are the same people who belong to Highland County Club.  Fayetteville is a community that sponsors a symphony orchestra, yet there is no jazz.  There is Harley Davidson.  There is drug activity.  There are murders.  Fayetteville is a dichotomy, an enigma which defies the traditional definition of a small southern town.  Lumberton, at least in film, may be more accurate in depicting a small southern North Carolina town, yet it still hosts Frank Booth.  What is it about small southern North Carolina towns?  I lived in Columbus, Ohio for a period spanning a decade, and I found it after several years of aclimation to be more intelligent and more down to earth.  People  told me that Columbus is so land locked with no geographical diversity, that its citizens were more savvy in being discerning conosseurs of products.  Also they were more discerning in life in general.  There is little small talk.  People in Cowtown were on the bottom, and everything that amassed above it was worthy of its own existence.  Columbus was its own filter, and it was a good one.  The history of the American south stems from slavery.  Therefore owning and managing slaves was a large part of southern culture.  So was sitting on large covered front porches drinking ice tea, lemonade, and mint julips.  That is what film would tell you about the south.  It is a pleasing visual and romantic sentiment.  In essence there was a dichotomy between the elite white slave owners and their poor uneducated Negro slaves.  Is this dichotomy the same dichotomy that exists in Fayetteville today?  Possibly.  I have yet to figure it out.  Each day I witness the diversity of Fayetteville, and still I do not understand it.  Maybe it is because I refuse to allow this traditional sentiment of the American South to exist in my own mind.  We have developed past that as a country, right?  Then again there was a Civil War, and I am discovering just now that America really has not evolved at all.  We are just the same as we always have been.  I guess that means I have to forgo my paid-for home and find another place to live that better represents my own life sentiments.  Over time I have come to understand what they are.  It would seem I am a bit European in nature.  All of those years working on cruise ships certainly has given me a more wordly perspective.  That is not all of it.  The other aspect of enlightenment is study. One has to want to learn other ways of life to escape their own indigenous roots.  I knew the day I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill I was ready for something else.  I knew because while I understood elitist southern culture, I wanted more.  I tried Columbia, South Carolina first, and it was not because I knew this then.  I went to USC, because they offered me a Graduate Teaching Associateship.  They essentially paid for my masters degree.  I enjoyed this period of my life immensely, until it ended.  That was not pretty.  In retrospect this period of life typified southern culture.  I was a music star for all intents and purposes.  It was a creative, artistic, happy time for me, and I became spoiled to think that this is how real life always would be.  NOT.  Even living in Fayetteville today it is a temptation to fall back into this lifestyle.  I perfectly am capable of self-actualization.  Given silence, a blank canvas, or an empty house I will find ways to create music, visual art, or build furniture.  I have an education to thank for this.  I crave the serenity to do such things, but that is not how the world is.  One must fight for one's existence.  While I can be perfectly happy in a creative vacuum, eventually reality will dawn and you will have to lay down your paint brushes and pick up a musket.  Today I live this way.  I toggle back and forth between limited creativity, and what I believe is an encroaching reality.  We are not a conservative society in dealing with the environment.  Conservation in America, like scientific inquisition, is a thing of the past.  We wage publicity campaigns of the wealthy mediocre, and fail in all capacities of sustaining the planet.  One day truly we will be fighting in the ruins of the military industrial complex.  

American ISIL Media

One common practice among old school Americans would be reading the news.  Because our society unfortunately has become so computer dependent, the internet has taken the place of many traditional means of commerce and distribution of information.  I embraced this new trend and happily use the internet for most of my needs.  I purchase products via the internet, and I used to read the news on the internet until now.  Only a few short years ago Reuters was a tried and true news organization.  Maybe they still are, but their news reporting online has gone the same way as television.  Either they prefer a radical right perspective, or they like has become common in America are trying to scare the American people.  The "Campaign of Fear and Intimidation" is not new.  It emerged during the second Bush administration and has proliferated since.  I open Reuters' web page for news or the BBC and I feel only can it be satire.  Maybe it is.  Possibly millennials have become so deprived of true human contact they have become this sardonic.  Is everything satire?  Is this what the news has become?  I am required to fish through the spin to arrive at a realistic depiction of the news?  So it seems.  "So it goes Lt. Exley."   In what should have been best picture in 1997, "LA Confidential" depicted the Los Angeles Police Department corrupt.  Corruption began at the top with Captain Dudley Smith, and throughout the film honest devoted people were murdered in an attempt to cover up his wrong doings within the department.  I am beginning to learn after being abroad for over a decade, corruption is commonplace in American society.  Everyone it seems is "on the take."  My experience has told me that corruption of this sort is a result of the common man failing to provide a comfortable living within the normal parameters of our capitalist socieo-econmic system.  It is common knowledge America has experienced a "financial crisis," what amounted to huge greed hence corruption on Wall Street.  Without disparaging President Clinton any further, Wall Street cronies exploited his campaign promise that, "Every American should be able to buy their own home."  Suddenly America's traditional set of checks and balances for credit were cast aside, and abundant capital from India and China was handed over to the American people in return for their financial souls.  Home prices doubled and mortgages were handed out like grub at a soup kitchen.  Everyone was encouraged to join the party and purchase a home out of what should have been the normal price range.  This was accomplished with hedge funds, pooling and selling these not vetted mortgages.  Eventually this available liquidity from overseas dissipated, Wall street hid their new earnings in Grand Camen and Switzerland, and the bottom dropped out of the housing market.  Millions of Americans defaulted on their loans.  Before George Bush left office, he dipped his hand into America's pockets and handed this money to these Wall Street scoundrels.  It was up to Eric Holder, the Attorney General in the Obama administration, and his justice department to find and prosecute this corruption.  He found great success as a litigator, and one by one these financial institutions were prosecuted and punished with a hefty fine.  What an interesting way to fund America.  This has become the modus operandi of our federal government.  The private sector has become so unregulated and corrupt, we fund America by fining them for wrongdoing.  Obama:  Let's auction off oil parcels in the Gulf of Mexico then prosecute the hell out of the oil companies when they act irresponsibly and pollute our natural resources.  Recently BankofAmerica was levied a seventeen billion dollar fine by the federal government for its role in the hedge fund scandal.  Consequently I no longer have the convenience of drive through windows at local branches in Fayetteville.  Simply put the news has become worse than George Orwell's "Newspeak."  Not only is media lying about reality, they have implemented a huge campaign of fear and terror more potent than a ranting war-crazed president scorned by Saddam Hussein.  ISIL with their extreme Islam roots truly have infiltrated American consciousness by purchasing our media.  

Trying To Sober Up

Life is sobering.  I believe I have had a privileged life.  I have had the life of a musical artist.  I have had fun.  I have created great music.  I have loved, and I have failed.  There is something about being a great musician that allows one to transcend life's bullshit.  It's that thing.  It's mojo.  It's a kind of magic.  I have lost touch with it, because for all intents and purposes in America, that thing is gone.  It used to happen in jazz clubs.  The jazz club is an anachronism, because we never taught millennials about this feeling.  They do things in their own way, and it all is based upon the swiping of a finger on a touchscreen.  Television now imitates this computer interface.  It is the new face of America.  Everything has to look like this flashy interface.  Many people may not know that Apple stole their point and click interface from Zerox.  It was a graphics interface.  Apple has done well fusing their machine into popular culture.  It used to be computer people were nerds.  Now everyone is a nerd, and they don't even know it.  It is because Apple figured out how to dupe everyone into believing they are hip for being self-centered, antisocial, and inhuman.  How could I possibly say antisocial with the plethora of websites devoted to social media?  It is a real conundrum.  While the world thinks they are hip for using high tech devices, really their behavior is quite inhuman.  People are self-centered, because they would rather stare at the palms than talk to a person.  They have forgotten how.  There are ad's on television that parody the modern family communicating at the dinner table via iPhones and iPads.  Apple is laughing all the way to the bank.  I used to be a fan of the Macintosh.  I have two, but they don't feel the same to me now.  What used to be hip was intelligent.  What is hip now is nerdy.  Apple took the wanna be's and made them think they were hip.  It was an effective ruse.  It is driving today's American economy.  Eventually it is going to run out.  Without human substance and an acknowledgement of the humanities as a legitimate philosophy of life, we are going nowhere.  Apple is laughing all the way to the bank.  

A Sacrifice of Ideals, a Rite of Passage?

Altruism has a new meaning for me.  Dementia is new to me.  Disrespect is new to me.  There was a time in America when "DD" meant something good.  We no longer are in that time.  I have no clue where we are in America.  I am lost.  I am lost in DD.   I drink too much, but I don't take drugs.  I don't have a doctor.  Double D minus one D is D.  I am in D.  Not depression, as I all ready have hurdled over that obstacle.  I am in dementia and disrespect with no doctor.  The "Three D's."  I have an issue in my melvis.  Melvis the pelvis is telling me that as much as I love sex, my pelvis is in trouble.  Post CT scan and MRI, no news.  I did the thing.  I toed the path of the medical establishment.  I made them money, but my Melvis is telling me I have an issue.  An issue.  A tissue?  May I have a tissue pull-eeze?  Mary Mattison?  Melvis at one time showed me blood in my spemen.  Sea men?  What's long and hard and full of sea men?  A submarine.  I have had two hernia reparations.  I mean repairs.  My prostate was normal, after multiple probings from male fingers in my anuson.  They probed and scanned, and my prostate was normal.  My Melvis tells me I have an issue.  The pain moves around.  It is transient.  I think maybe it only can be a small animal or worm that has made its way up my urethra.  It is moving around hopefully not multiplying.  My coccyx aches.  Sometimes my hips hurt, but they don't lie.  I am hoping it is my Colon.  I had an endoscopy in Malaga by the King's doctor.  Not Martin King.  Not the King's English.  Not King Arthur.  The King of Spain.  He found H. Pylori in my stomach, the discovery of which won the the Noble Prize in physiology in 2005. I had it once.  I guess I got it again, but with no doc who's to know?  I went to Josiah Clinic and found out I am allergic to Septra.  Cipro helped my Melvis, but not completely.  It is like a tribe of barbaric but harmless warriors are crusading in my abdomen.  Abdomenus.  Idomeneo.  They run around. "Why do you do that, Avery?"  "I like to chase the wives of Tom Cruise who look like Jeanne Tripplehorn," replies Avery Tolar in what must be one of the best films of all time.  Dave Grusin provided the solo piano soundtrack, when playing the piano meant something to America.   I picked the wrong profession.  I would rather be a pimp.  America needs good pimps.  We need legalized prostitution. We are such a tight-assed, bassackward country.  It is disappointing.  It is disappointing to me that once the entire world heralded America as the seraphim.  "Angels, Bubba," in the voice of Tom Cruzhanks.  Of course I mean Tom Hanks.  Denzel was a distributor of Blue Magic in the film "American Gangster."  We could use some???  Muff magic?   

Washington, DC Working for You!

1. Lobbies of Congress to pass legislation that retroactively relieves all telecommunication companies of their responsibility to keep phone records private. Makes them immune from pending lawsuits resting precariously in the Apellate Court system. Justifies warrantless wiretapping at the whim of the White House.

2. Republicans stalemate a Democratic initiative in Congress to pull troops out of Iraq.

3. Bush refuses to acknowledge the Blackwater Security Firm killed eleven Iraqi civilians in a gunfight. (He says this needs to be proven first)

Music Quiz

Reggae swings backwards. It is some of the hippest music there is. It is soul music, and you have to experience it as a cultural event related to social injustice.

Afro-Cuban quintessentially is ensemble music. Each musician must know their individual part and must play it authoritatively but independently from the other players in the band. These musicians rely upon one another for rhythmic support, and it rotates democratically through the band. It often uses a clave, a fancy term for a rhythmic pattern of 2/3 or 3/2 found in a bar of 4/4 music. Saxophones usually play the “riff,” a repeated melodic fragment, and the brass punctuate. Harmonically Afro-Cuban may use the augmented fifth of a chord provoking a primitive feeling. In mambo gutteral grunts and shouts can be heard from the percussionists and even dancers. Afro-Cuban is mostly dance music.

In medieval music mensuration of perfect tempus and major prolation has a symbolic association with the Holy Trinity.

Hexachordal Combinatoriality in the 12 tone method of music composition combines halves of two different tone rows.

The Ripieno group in a Concerto Grosso is the larger group of players usually with not as much talent. The concertante group is the smaller group of more skilled players. This group serves as the solo “instrument” in a concerto for an ensemble. The J.S. Bach Brandenburg Concerto’s might be the most well known of the genre.

Arch form is ABA.

Stophic form consists of repeated stanzas.

The Super Locrian or Locrian Sharp two is a mode of the Lydian Chromatic Concept, a scholarly treatise by George Russell, used to define a scale choice for improvisation over a half-diminished chord.

Metric Modulation is a method of changing meter in music that makes use of polyrhythm. It superimposes a different but multiple time signature over the original and begins to use it for its main metric subdivision.

Being Shat On

It's interesting living in a town upon which you are shat.  Daily I am shat upon.  Today I was shat upon by Time/Warner Cable.  Even after changing our service to Direct TV, we needed to return Time/Warner's equipment.  I had forgotten it was the first day of the month, and it turned out to be in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday.  Not good odds for wait times.  I had a large box of cable paraphernalia including two cable boxes, five remote controls, two adapters, and their AC power supplies.  It was a heavy box.  We could not even get into the room.  The line was backed up into the foyer, and there was no room left in it.  I had a large box with which to fumble.  We bailed, because Time/Warner does not have the courtesy to provide its customers with a facility that can handle its subscriptions.  The same is true with the DMV.  North Carolina or Fayetteville in particular do not have the respect to provide their customers with a facility that can handle their load.  It is demeaning to be shat upon with no alternative.  It feels a little like slavery.  These oversights of our civil liberties have become common, because the wealthy control America.  If you own a home in a particular town, how upon which can you be shat?  You could have unpleasant neighbors.  Check.  You could....  what?  You could have pollution.  People die of cancer in Fayetteville in disproportionate numbers.  A friend of mine died of lung cancer in her early twenties.  Many musician friends of mine have died of cancer.  My uncle died of liver cancer.  My cousin has cancer which started in her breasts and spread.  People die of cancer in Fayetteville in disproportionate numbers.  Camp Lejeune located in Jacksonville, North Carolina had a problem with cancer deaths.  It seems they had been dumping toxic chemicals including trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, and benzene into the water table.  These in turn contaminated the bases water supply making many people ill.  It is well known the the water from the Cape Fear River contains toxins, but overseeing governmental agencies seem to have no interest.  Always it has been of interest to me as I have learned more about Fayettenam, that large plants exist here located conveniently on the Cape Fear River.  Both DuPont and DAK, producers of polyester resin, are situated near the Cape Fear.  There are others including America's largest privately owned company, Cargill.  Why are all of these plants situated on the banks of the Cape Fear?  I don't worry about the water that much, because I drink bottled water like most people in America.  Once there was a time when clean drinking water was provided to us a citizens of America.  Then they chose to sell it to us at a cost.  While I am relatively positive water from the Cape Fear is a mess, it doesn't concern me.  What concerns me is another kind of pollution which has continued unnoticed for years.  Because you cannot see something does not mean it does not exist.  You can see aircraft flying low above the trees in Fayettenam, and they are annoying.  They are not annoying because you can see them.  They have become annoying in a much more invasive manner.  Not only can you hear the aggravating gurgle of the plane engines droning incessantly for hours at a time, you can feel their vibration.  It is not well known that less than a mile from our neighborhood sits The Department of Homeland Security.  Innocuously they are contained in an unmarked building nestled across the street from a local middle school.  The Fayetteville Observer has reported that the annoying aircraft belong to them.  I researched it a bit, and their fleet contains Beechcraft Kingair 350's, which are equipped with a complex surveillance and date collection package.  I can feel this.  Not only do these planes create tinnitus in my left ear, I can feel the vibrating pressure on my skin.  It is not unlike the vibrating pressure produced by diesel-electric locomotives operated by the A&R, Norfolk Southern, and CSX-T.  They all operate with impunity.  They do whatever the hell they want 24/7.  More trains run in the wee hours of the night than do during the day, or at least I can hear them better.  What bothers me is that they are unregulated.  They pretty much do whatever they please, and screw the citizens of Fayetteville.  The act as though 4000 horsepower of diesel prime mover is an untraceable machine, but just the opposite.  We all know when they are here, and we all suffer.  We suffer from all of the symptoms about which people have been complaining since, the railroads went nuts with cargo shipping.  Difficulty concentrating, fatigue, physical pain, and negative thoughts.  I remember when railroading in Fayetteville was at a minimum, and more importantly I remember how good I used to feel.  Now I feel like shat.  

War Trains and the Oppression of the American South

After four years  at Chapel Hill I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.  Graduating from UNC was the single most difficult thing ever I have achieved.  While I enjoyed working on the masters degree at USC-Columbia, it was nothing like the challenge of undergraduate work at a major academic institution.  Possibly my educational experience during the early l980's could have been more challenging than it is today.  As a certified teacher (although my active certificate long has expired) certainly I can surmise that our academic standards in America are not nearly what they used to be.  I went to high school under a presidential initiative of "The Three R's."  Readin,' Ritin,' and Rithmatic.  If anyone today remembers this belonged to George and Barbara Bush.  During the l980's America was a better place than it is today.  A large part of the decline of civility in America has come with the widespread promotion and implementation of wireless telecommunications.  I have no cell phone.  I'm not sure if even we use this terminology anymore.  A "cell" is a small area that provides wireless telecommunications with a microwave transmitter and receiver.  The frequencies which a "cell phone" uses long have been prohibited for commercial use by the Federal Communications Commission.  It is easy to surmise that federal agencies and commissions aren't what they used to be.  George's son had a lot to do with that.  His presidential initiative was deregulation.  With deregulation came an un-funding of many government agencies whose previous job was to police private corporate America.  Once at a neighborhood meeting in Columbus, Ohio I asked a representative of the Federal Railroad Administration if he was aware of the dangerous effects to the human body of AC Traction.  He didn't know what AC traction was.  It is this kind of ignorance with which we are dealing today in America.  It is one reason why we are so screwed up as a country.  Pay offs.  I don't mean Payola.  If anyone today remembers this, it belonged to radio stations and record companies.  Radio stations accepted bribes in return for promoting particular music.  Nothing has changed.  One only has to turn on the tube and listen to what is being broadcast.  Music today is tepid, selfish, self-righteous, propaganda.  I try occasionally to listen to a current band on television, and ten times out of ten it is the same worthless pop.  I observe the "technique" of the instrumentalists, and immediately it is apparent that it is worthless pop.  Worthless pop really has no technique.  While the players do seem to be able to articulate appropriate notes on their instruments, there is no feeling.  One only has to watch bassist Charlie Haden perform on his instrument, and immediately you will understand what I am saying.  Charlie makes love with his bass.  That really seems "Politically Incorrect" today.  We have become such a tight-assed inhuman race under the tutelage of wireless telecommunication, we wouldn't understand what real pleasure is.  It's almost like the definition of the word "is."  Young people of today like to argue about the validity of historical practices rather than acknowledging and learning about them.  It far is easier to say, "Jazz is anything," rather than taking the time to study it.  I should know, seeing as I have studied it most of my life.  I have taught jazz studies twice at two different universities.  That was when I felt it was important to human life.  Still I do, but you must pick your battles.  I refuse to take flack for knowing things.  If the youth of today or the Republican party decide to refute the validity of jazz music, God, or the danger of wireless microwave communications, so be it.  They will all be dead eventually, and that is what I am hoping for.  I have a newfound disdain for the ignorant, after discovering that the mediocre wealthy rule the world.  The pop musicians of today are the perfect metaphor for about what I am talking.  They miss the point.  Why would you ever have sex if you didn't give it your all?  Some people have discovered that there is nothing worse than bad sex.  Something potentially that can provide you with ecstatic physical and emotional pleasure and doesn't?  It's a huge disappointment.  So is pop music.  Why would I want even to acknowledge a product with no passion?  It is because we have become brainwashed to submit to "The Man."  No longer are we taught to question and to attempt to find answers for ourselves.  We are back in the 80's with the mediocre wealthy trying to fit into a particular group or be popular.  To many this seems to be the crux of their existence.  I missed the bus.  There were quite a few times when I missed the bus at UNC-Chapel Hill. One was undergraduate advisement.  I never was told by anyone that you had to have a faculty advisor sign off on your course choices.  I was the absolute last person on the schedule for my particular advisor, and I had to pencil myself in.  I had to get registered by the deadline.  The other time I wholeheartedly missed the bus was entering my name in the lottery for sophomore dorm housing.  I was not told you needed to do this.  I had no idea that dorm housing was such a prized commodity at UNC.  I ended up staying in the dorm room of former Chancellor Holden Thorp, when he and his roommate's temporary "triple" Marvin was assigned his own dorm room a month into the semester.  Stealthy I slid into their dorm room with its extra bed and lived there with no key for a few weeks.  After a mountain gig one weekend I slept on top of my Fender Rhodes piano in the back of our l964 Volkswagon Beetle.  Needless to say graduating from UNC was the single most difficult thing ever I have achieved.  The most notable thing I ever have achieved is writing four hours of contemporary classical music for the piano.  The second most notable thing I ever have achieved is producing eleven compact discs of produced music, mostly of my own composition.  Why would anyone want to have sex or make love and not give it your best shot?  It is because we have been brainwashed to "lay down" for "the Man."  I missed this bus, and I am glad.  It almost is as important as the Montgomery, Alabama city bus upon which Rosa Parks took her stand on America's anachronistic segregation laws in 1955.  Millennials themselves have missed the bus, and they don't know it yet.  Why would anyone want to play music and not give it their best shot?  It is because success is accomplished not with talent, but with savvy.  The purely human physical and emotional needs to excel instead are replaced with detached cunning.  Instead of using God's chosen tools for human fulfillment, an indifferent, aloof, and emotionally unavailable sentiment is chosen.  Truly it is like "The Walking Dead," and they believe it is hip.  Hip to be square, but hip to be dead?  I guess this is why current video games and television fixate upon mythical monsters such as vampires and werewolves.  We have become a soulless, misguided, Godless society.  It is easier to lay down than to fight.  I truly have missed this bus to the undead, and while emotionally I am suffering like many others, I chose life over my own prostitution.    

Wealth and Mediocrity

Maybe my timing was off.  Maybe Ft. Bragg currently isn't putting together a two mile long war train underneath the ground at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.  Supposedly the Marines have blown that particular pop stand and returned to their coastal Atlantic stronghold of Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville.  I am not sure how they travel to Bragg.  The aerial vehicle of choice for the Marines is the VTOL Osprey.  They train on the army's artillery twice a year, so I assume they fly.  All of that aside my point is that with three operating railroads located in Fayettenam, even if they aren't putting together one of those massive munitions trains, it can seem like it.  This time it was Norfolk Southern.  For some reason their prime movers have been sitting at CSX-T's Milan yard the last week.  Fayetteville's three railroads share trackage that all uses the small switching yard crossing Blount Street parallel to Robeson Street.  It is the luck of the draw which paint scheme you will see on any given day.  On bad days you will see all three.  The Aberdeen and Rockfish, credited as one of the most successful shortline railroads in the United States, uses vintage motive power that is over sixty years old.  That boils down to EMD's GP-7, GP-18, and GP-38.  The GP-7 is the most offensive, and also it is credited as being the only non-rebuilt "Geep" still in service today by its original owner.  Talk about dutiful.  It is obvious that the maintaining of these original locomotives has allowed the A&R to remain financially viable.  Today in America, unlike in our history, we have become an expendable society.  We sell products which are expendable and thus not meant to stand the test of time.  This includes computer hardware and software which are designed to fail or become extinct on purpose, so that we will to upgrade.  To anyone who has studied computer science before the year 2000, this is not a prudent philosophy.  You stick with what works, chewing gum, paper clips, and all.  When you achieve an operating system which happily runs your programs with few system crashes, you keep it!  This is not our newest business philosophy in America.  Slowly over the last decade our markets have become saturated with inferior products prompting a slow down in American spending.  Americans do not look forward to spending money, when it is not both fun and rewarding.  Spending, like most things in America, has become a chore.  Buying a car is a chore.  Buying a garden sprinkler on eBay is a chore.  Buying groceries is a chore, because there are so many inferior products being marketed to us.  It takes diligence to sift through this muck and make an educated buying decision.  Recently I became a second generation home owner.  More accurately my sister and I will inherit my parents home when they die.  That will not occur for some time, and my sister and her husband all ready have their own home.  A predicament this presents to me.  Do I give up my plans of being a viable professional musician and living in a large city, or do I accept this token of inherited wealth and plan to live in it?  To live in this house is a challenge.  It not yet is mine, but I live in it.  I have lived in it like a transient for some time.  I have been working on cruise ships, and that job requires that I travel and sometimes live on ships.  It has not been a total stretch to camp out for a while in this house.  As time passes it is becoming more difficult.  I have begun to lose touch with my profession.  To make matters more difficult my mother has begun to plant seeds of doubt whether or not I still can get a gig.  She would rather me stay here, where there are few musical opportunities.  The ones there are are highly prized and guarded.  It is a bit of a conundrum to me to see musicians so tenacious about their own jobs.  To understand this scenario imagine being able to direct the United States Ground Forces Band at Ft. Bragg.  You have notoriety.  You get to play around in music (which if fun), and you get paid.  Now possibly we can understand why musician jobs are coveted as the holy grail.  We have a Fayetteville Symphony, yet possibly only one member lives in Fayetteville.  That is because he has a teaching job here.  The rest of the musicians commute from rather long distances to play in the Fayetteville Symphony.  It really is not the Fayetteville Symphony at all.  It should be called something else, possibly the Fayetteville Regional Symphony.  Still I am not sure if that should qualify an instrumentalist from  Charleston, South Carolina as a real member.  This is the way that it is, and consequently it is a much better orchestra.  I don't really enjoy their concerts, because I do not know the people.  When The Fayetteville Little Theater became the Cape Fear Regional Theater, they began using professional equity actors from all over the country.  The shows for me lost their appeal, because I do not know the people.  I have done my fair share of pit orchestra work at CFRT, but I can't remember it.  Bo Thorp officially has retired as the acting Artistic Director, and I personally do not know its new director, Tom Quaintance.  He is a quality director, but I do not know his people.  It is not the same kind of local theatre experience.  On a different note as I watched Cecily Strong roast the gamut of the world last night at President Obama's press corp dinner, it dawned on me.  The press is mediocre.  With the exception of Rachel Maddow, the rest of the press are lazy overpaid zealots.  Like the rest of American products being offered to us each day, their product also is inferior.  It was blatant.  It brutally was telling to watch the president tell the truth about life in America, in spite of the remarkable spin that has been placed on us by our media.  It singlehandedly gave credence to the profession of comedy, which also tells the truth about life.  Really that is all you have to do to be funny, tell the truth.  Hearing President Obama and Ms. Strong tell the truth was uplifting and inspiring.  Here were two extremely intelligent well-prepared public figures who put the press corp to shame by not spinning the truth.  It pointed out to me why there no longer is talent on the airwaves, because wealthy mediocrity does not want it.  In a few short minutes I was transported back to my high school days, when all I knew was to excel.  You excel to stay away from wealthy mediocrity.  I had a moment of extreme lucidity.  Lately I have realized there are few people around me with whom I would choose to interact.  This includes television.  Not only would I not choose with which to communicate, I would not choose to which to listen.  I flip through the channels late at night, and slowly there has become nothing to which to listen or watch except wealthy mediocrity.  Evidently there are a lot of rich people who own television.  I have become surrounded by the very faction of people I have spent my life trying to avoid.  It is easy for me to remember the real Golden Days of Television.  Ms. Strong suggested we are in such a period now. [sic] Her vehicle of delivery often was an unfinished sentence leaving the audience to contemplate her insinuation.  Ms. Strong suggested we are in a Golden Age of Television, but......   It is not true.  It is far from the truth and for good reason.  There is no talent on television.  There is little talent anywhere in America anymore, because we do not value it.  More precisely wealthy mediocrity does not want it, because it points out how mediocre they are.  (Kardashians, Housewives of Atlanta, etc.)  Upon entering the gardening aisles at WalMart, you are swamped with names of mediocre products like Orbit, Melnor, and Gilmour.  While it is possible these manufacturers are producing some quality products, the majority of what they are offering on television and on the aisles at WalMart are inferior.  I know this from experience.  Most of the water-related products will last one season.  All of the oscillating sprinklers I have purchased have failed in one way or another, and I have put in a fair amount of time searching for them.  They all suffer from the same design flaws.  The jets become clogged with dirt, and more commonly the gearing breaks or they begin to leak.  It hugely has been frustrating.  Often the knob which adjusts the  spray pattern does not have markings forcing you to experiment with a flowing sprinkler.  I have spent fifteen minutes attempting to adjust one of these sprinklers.  I have come to realize  these sprinklers represent much of America's product.  We are inundated with wealthy mediocrity.  The Golden Age of Television  encompassed talent which abundantly is evident throughout the history of American television.  Talent is evident, because it was required to be viewed.  Today we are a much less discerning populace, and talent no where is to be found.  Talent is absent, because wealthy mediocrity does not want it.  What wealthy mediocrity wants wealthy mediocrity gets now in America.  I do not want to see Bruce Jenner try to become a woman on television.  Who gives a shit?  It is pig fodder.  Talent is absent, because talent takes effort.  Talent takes effort, and it takes years of study and discipline to refine it.  Talent is the ability of an artist to contemplate, understand, and then comment upon an issue through a medium.  In real time an artist opens their emotional psyche up to an issue, and allows it to respond guiding the artist in their  commentary.  Wealthy mediocrity does not attempt this.  They are too lazy, like the media.  Artists do this.  Once artists, not wealthy mediocrity, were valued in American media.  Artists can come in many flavors.  They can be news anchors, they can be sound engineers, they can be visual artists, and they can be actors.  Most importantly artists can be musicians, and this leaves the largest void in popular American culture.  We no longer value artistic music.  If we did wealthy mediocrity would be forced to recognize and acknowledge that the arts are produced by valuable, worthy, talented people, not themselves.  Then the balance of power in America would be upset.  This trend recently has promulgated and no better can it be represented than with America's lack of melody.  Once we were a country of tunes.  Tunes or melodies were a core component of our everyday life.  We had patriotic tunes.  We had hymns.  We had spirituals.  We had lullabies.  We had American popular songs.  We had Bluegrass.  We had Country and Western.  We had jazz.  We had Rock.  We had Funk.  We had Soul.  Anywhere in America you would turn a musical underpinning was in place guiding you.  That is over.  We have become a tuneless soulless nation.  Both television and radio are a part of this demise.  It is obvious wealthy mediocrity has acquired these two mediums, and they are not able to stomach a piece of humble pie and recognize and acknowledge that great music is created by great people, people of worth, value, and talent.  How we have become this selfish nation is beyond me.  Being forced back in time by President Obama's press corp dinner gave me a comforting clarity.  Still today I am fighting the exact same contingency which existed in the l980's.  Nothing has changed, except they have won.  We do not hear catchy television themes.  We do not hear clever commercial jingles.  We do not hear effective drama underscoring.  What we will hear is the same innocuous droning jungle drum cue present in almost every movie trailer.  Instead of wit, humor, and intelligence wealthy mediocrity use fear and intimidation.  Infrasound-laced jungle drums have become the new battle cry for wealthy mediocrity.  Like Republicans they dull our minds with sheer will, not talent.