The Chasm of Classical Music

Before Garage Band, before karaoke, and before iTunes there was a thing called a "Working Musician."  Working Musicians did all the things a computer does for us today.  These were things of integrity.  Talent was required.  So was knowledge.  Being a working musician had it merits.  It provided a living.  Today working musicians are soldiers.  Soldiers.  To be a working musician you must either go through basic training or Officer's Training School.  Okay.  Perhaps that is comparable to a collegiate music degree.  Other working musicians are academicians.  To become an academician today a doctorate is required.  They hand these out  at a cost.  If you are passionate and have the money, it would seem you can get a doctorate.  I almost have a doctorate, but I find myself different than the doctors of music around me.  

Coming home.  The most brutal thing about "Coming Home" for me are the wet dreams.   They are surprising.  So are the nightmares.  The short stories and complete novels to which I am privy to remember from sleep are a welcome diversion from the brutal reality of music in Fayetteville.  This is not so for the established local musical community.  They seem hungry.  They seem aggressive.  They seem to thrive on the seeds of music dropped for them.  It is surprising, and I do not connect with any of it.  I remember Methodist University, when it was Methodist College.  I remember both its voice and keyboard professors.  I played with and learned from both of these individuals.  Like my father they were a musical spine of Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Today we have an "Arts Council," which is the envy of the state.  The introduction of every concert I attend in the -Ville consists of a devout invocation of our Arts Council.  Like the former professors of voice and keyboards at Methodist College, I knew the Arts Council.  I knew its history, and I knew its diversions.  Now we have a Botanical Garden.  A Botanical Garden is a private country club built in the name of botany, which sponsors musical academicians among others.  It's a clique.  The Arts Council of Fayetteville is the envy of the state because...... "Drum roll please?  Who is chopped?"  The Arts Council of Fayetteville is the envy of the state, because they are rich.  They are the people who built the Botanical Garden.  In their later years realizing you can't pull a U-Haul behind a hearse, affluent Fayettevillians decided to become patrons of the arts.  That included upgrading a second rate symphony orchestra to a position of personal demagoguery.  Like Tom Quaintance, the artistic director of the Cape Fear Regional Theater, artistic leaders in the city of Fayetteville really are not free to administer as they please.  There is this beast of our Arts Council to consider, and they have the money.  

Okay.  The Court of Esterhazy also had affluence.  They were patrons of music, and Papa Haydn had no trouble working for them.  I am not an opponent of working for the affluent.  What I am a staunch opponent of is the abstracting of art for the purposes of patronage.  I don't mean abstraction in terms of Pablo Picasso or the Abstract Expressionists.  This style of visual abstraction in art is important and vital to the evolution of mankind.  So is the Avant Garde in jazz music.  In ways they are the same.  I am a staunch opponent of the abstraction of honest expression and content of art into Musica Reservata.  Defined often in contradictory ways Musica Reservata can be considered music for the elite few.  Also it can be defined as music which acknowledges the public's opinion more than it does the authors intent.  This is what we have today, and it is alarming.  

Okay.  I almost have a doctorate in musical composition.  That means I must have an undergraduate degree of some sort.  Mine is in music education from UNC-Chapel Hill.  This institution until recently was a reputable purveyor of academic knowledge, until  athletic contributions became more important.  Graduating from UNC-Chapel was the single most difficult thing ever I have achieved.  It was that difficult.  While the education component of the music ed. degree was a bust, the remaining curriculum of music was intense and demanding.  Seventy percent of music majors dropped out in their first semester not being able to pass Music Theory 101.  Luckily I had been playing the piano for twelve years, and George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was in my repertoire at the time.  I made it through Music Theory 101 and the rest.  I emerged an educated musician worthy of becoming a "Working Musician."  Many who pursue a doctorate degree choose to go  through the masters degree.  I did not.  I earned a Masters in Jazz and Commercial Music from USC-Columbia.  You may never have heard of this acronym, but you have heard of the Gamecocks.  This graduate program at USC was groundbreaking.  I wrote jingles, something that is not in fashion today.  I played commercial jobs on keyboards, I played jazz on the trumpet, and I learned how to arrange for various ensembles.  I wrote music including that for my first recording featuring Chris Potter, "Crystal Raindrops."  My doctoral studies began at OSU where my USC advisor John Emche matriculated.  He turned out well, so I figured Columbus would be a fruitful musical city.  I was right.  I began at OSU writing familiar jazz-oriented work.  After a few years I was told by my advisor, Dr. Thomas H. Wells, (also the advisor for Dr. Keith Dippre, Chairman of the Department of Music at Methodist University) that I would have to follow the same compositional path as the rest of the doctoral students.  This meant putting my jazz sensibilities on hold and opening an avenue to the Second Viennese School.  Needless to say years later I know  I am talking about.  I write serious piano music influenced by these gentlemen, and Aaron Copland, Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, Charles Ives.  These piano composition bridge the contemporary gap between America's jazz heritage and European classical music.  They are groundbreaking, and upon discovery I also will be affluent.  This is a bit difficult to stomach in the presence of the Fayetteville Arts Council.  One would think they are the only court in the book.  That is the way it seems around here.  As I attend their concerts and support the local musicians, a wider chasm is created between my musical sensibilities and theirs.  
Music to them it seems is some magical, mystical, empowering thing selfishly that seeks to exclude those not in their group.  Is it possible that those other than doctors can understand and appreciate music?  It is the first ever I have heard of it, and to my knowledge that point of view only exists in Fayettenam.  If one did examine  education in Cumberland County, it would be obvious why this chasm exists.  It should not.  Music is given of God, and it is natural in every human being.  Both Suzuki and Kodaly understand this and seek to connect with this musical inclination early in the years of child development.  It should be.  Classical music, including Beethoven, is not mysticism.  One only has to understand it and Heir Beethoven to reap its rewards.  Shouting, "Bravo" at the conclusion of a mediocre performance of his Triple Concerto shows only your ass.   This is an example of Musica Reservata, music reserved for the few who seek to exclude themselves from those around them.  "The Chasm of Classical Music," America's newest great divide of hypocrisy, is evil and unmerited.  Like suffrage, slavery, and civil liberty music never was intended to oppress or exclude the poor, and yet it does in Fayetteville.  The petulant Greek gods and goddesses who have nothing better to do with their money entertain themselves with an art form meant for better.  

The Fallen Hero of Cruise Ship Music

Never I thought much about it when I rang up Carnival and asked them for a piano job.  Never I thought much about it until I locked in to play my first production show on the Destiny.  It was "Nightclub Express," and after sitting down behind the keyboard in the orchestra Pit I was instructed to place an ear bud in my ear.  "We are playing along with tracks, and this will help you hear the click track."  I began to think about the piano job then.  Over the course of the next twelve years, I thought about this piano job frequently.  I had to, because it was the only way of ensuring my job security.  It became the most difficult and challenging musical endeavor of my career.  I got better at it, mostly from thinking about it a lot.  As it turns out my doctoral composition studies are what ensured my job security.  Preparing music for performance was second nature to me now, and that craft was required almost one hundred percent of the time as a cruise ship pianist.  The other requirements were valid still (playing in various styles, playing in all twelve keys, improvisation, and accompaniment), but fixing the piano music was paramount for my success.  You see the odds were loaded against me.  For some reason the piano music on ships is a metaphor for the pop music of today.  It has no clue.  It bears no resemblance to prepared classical or commercial music of a professional nature.  There was no Berkeley course in music notation.  (which is straight forward and authoritative)  The piano music was an after thought of a cruise ship arranger whose paramount responsibility was writing and recording these tracks with which we were required to play along.  So be it.  With determination, diligence, and talent (of which the least was required) I managed to keep the job never getting fired.  The closest I got to getting fired was getting into an argument with a mess attendant at five thirty a.m. over my tank top styled shirt.  She spoke only broken Spanglish, and it never dawned on my my bare arm pits were a threat to her job security.  Funny how the cruise ship business works.  I grew as a musician and a politician working as a cruise ship pianist.  I figured out which fights to champion, and which fights to ignore.  I was humiliated, berated, and against discriminated, but over time and with an ever increasing salary I made peace with the cruise ship piano gig.  As it turns out returning home was more of the challenge, and I have not been as successful.  I will be so cliche to say, "You can't go home."  What the fuck does this mean?  I didn't know, but I now know this.  Of course I can go home.  That a simple matter of logistics is.  The reason why YOU can't go home, or supposedly no one can go home is......   Drum roll please.  Who is chopped?   The reason why we can't go home, is because the place we grew up never changes.  The people who were there when you were there are the same.  They are the same.  Their lives are the same, as when you were there.  They did not grow.  They did not go off to school.  They did not marry.  They are exactly the same as when you were there AS A CHILD.  Asking these people to reacquaint themselves with you as an adult....   Well.  You get the picture.  Above all your parents and family fall into this category.  They do not grow.  Amazingly they expect you to stay just the same as you always have been, a child, needing to be disciplined.  In my lifetime I have not experienced a vigil of change.  I have lived in four different cities, and I have visited ports all over the globe.  This is one perk of working on a cruise ship as a pianist.  You have enough off time to see the places your visit, rather than slaving in a restaurant eighteen hours a day.  These are not the things about which I want to write.  Instead I want to document and understand the challenges of returning HOME.  "Isn't there some place you can do your music?"  "There is a music minister job open at St. Turd Knocks church."  "The academic music community here is very small-minded."  "We have the most envied Arts Council in the state."  (probably the country)  "Can't you play the pipe organ?"  "What are you doing these days?"  When I answer I am cooking for my mother and tending to our yard, the response overwhelmingly is sentimental.  "We think that is wonderful!"  Perhaps for my mother this is wonderful.  She does not reiterate it, unless I instigate a quick review of most of my accomplishments on the home front.  I have renovated our yard.  (which is much larger that most of the yards in our neighborhood)  I transformed our front yard from a desolate, moss-laden, dirt pool into a picturesque grass covered meadow.  There are two live oak trees, incidentally which are much more alive because of my maintenance.  Their roots have been covered with rich soil, and they have been mulched.  Once the downspout run-off was diverted with a simple plastic pipe and scenic drainage ditch of river pebbles, the centipede sod took well to the newly fertilized dirt.  A call to the city's arborists created a speckled spectrum of sunlight throughout the day to nurture the new grass.  I was successful, at least for now.  Again, this is not about what I want to write.  "This is my son."  I am fifty-two years old, soon to be fifty-three in a few days, and my daily conversation to people other than my mother consists of, "Hello. How are you?" ("Won't you please bring me a latte, Taylor the Latte Boy?"  [sic]  I have one friend.  I have one sister and one brother-in-law.  I see the one friend more than I see the sister and brother-in-law, because they are overwhelmed with their working lives.  I am not employed in a secure wage-earning job like a cruise ship pianist.  Each day I must bear the guilt of knowing I am not working doing what I know best.  I know quite a few musical things, including emulating Miles Davis, composing like Aaron Copland, and arranging music like Quincy Jones.  "Isn't there somewhere where you can do your music?"  This question while simple severs my last sane nerve.  I have done well balancing the charade of "coming home."  My intellect as a doctoral level composer is what has allowed me to survive in this position.  I cannot say I have thrived, but comparatively speaking to the other members of St. John's Episcopal Church, I am a saint.  "We think that is wonderful...."  (cooking for my mother, especially she she stumbled over our downspout extension and broke her wrist.)  I embraced the yard, because it was familiar to me.  I had worked in the yard as a youth, and it gave me peace.  At times it still does, but not with newly encroaching fall.  Now instead of nurturing new growth, I am observing the loss of yet another bevy of things in my life.  My musical life is gone, and now so will by my newly planted sod.  If I think enough, I can ascertain hopefully the sod will return in the Spring newly energized by the coming warm weather.  Perhaps this experience will not be like the other losses I continue to amass in my small life.  It seems life is a matter of gaining and losing.  After three years home I am tired of having to greet strangers as my mother's son.  I long for conversation that is familiar, challenging, and erotic.  I have no women friends, and thus I have no conversation with anyone that strengthens my skills as a mate.  (They are solid)  I live an existence devoid of any human interaction common to most people, and I survive.  I survive because I can remember it.  

Sunny Point Shenanigans

I can't say if I would be proud being American.  I'm American, but I'm not.  I'm not a terrorist.  I'm not an extremist.  I'm not a fatalist. I shouldn't be monitored by the Militia Watchdog.  I am just a typical American disillusioned with our country.  There is not much of which to be proud.  The medical establishment has become corrupt, and a majority of it abuses the poor.  Congress is a joke as is the 2016 Presidential Campaign.  No one running has the capability to lead America out of her problems.  America has become a facade.  America has become a masquerade.  America is a joke.  The joke has been created by computers.  Reality has been sequestered for years, and I am doubtful she ever will return.  The graven images the country seems to worship all are manifestations of foreign interests.  If we had remained true to American ideals, still we would be America and American.  These ideals have been replaced with cheap knock offs like sugar on top of shit.  "The Voice."  -a joke.  "The Rest of Them." -more jokes.  Foreign interests are laughing as they run America.  Americans are suffering.  Is a coup in order?  Will America have another revolution like the Russians or the French?  Are we an Animal Farm?  The answer must be, "Yes," but we as a people are in no way prepared for such a task.  There are guns, but there is no vision.  There is no realization that the majority of Americans simply are slaves of the rich.  We are afraid for our lives and our security.  While Sunny Point feeds the rich and bleeds North Carolina dry, Appalachians sit around mindlessly strumming on our banjos.  Twenty million tons of supplies headed for the wars in the Middle East, wars that have nothing to do with the American people and their well being?  It's a joke.  We are a joke.  The Presidential Campaign is a joke.  Obama is not joke, but he is leaving.  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used her political influence to hawk her husband's speaking engagements.  They grew rich, and she did not do her job.  Consequently she is not qualified to lead this country.  If she had honed her wares of diplomacy as did Dame Medeleine Albright while acting as America's Secretary of State, then possibly there may exist pebble of qualification.  To elect Hillary president based upon her job performance as America's Secretary of State?  All we can say as a country is the snipe hunt of Benghazi.  Benghazi.  Benghazi, and the Clinton's have grown wealthy.  This does not the mark of a great president make.  She is flip like Oprah.  Would Oprah make a good president?  She would make a much better president than Hillary Clinton, because her record of professional achievement has been in the public eye.  Where is Oprah, and why is she not running for president?  It is too great a task or retool America.  I have given up.  While I am not a terrorist, an extremist, or a militia member, I cannot help but re-enter my childhood.  I watched Sunrise theater, and now I remember how our lives were lived on the edge of our own demise.  There is no humanity.  There is no security.  We are forced to live lives of extremism, because also like reality, God has been sequestered.  

Medical Contractors

You don't blog for a while, and your bacon ends up looking like a giant vagina.  Hillary Clinton is on the Benghazi hit list.  ISIS  mercilessly slaughters a hundred protestors in Turkey.  The Prez is eying his executive power in lieu of much needed  but unattainable gun legislation.  We should follow Australia's model.  It is time for the senseless massacres to stop.  Since we as a nation are too timid to acknowledge the true assailants to our mental health, we must do something.  It is ironic a nation that championed an "American Dream" has become a nation of fascist corporate CEO's.  I think they should all burn in hell, as they will.  The war train steams on underground at Fort Bragg, but it no longer is powered by steam.  Instead deadly homosexual rays are killing us with radiation.  I can't see.  I can't hear.  I can't feel.  My eyesight is manipulated on a daily basis by un unknown agitator.  The small frequency of visible light in our electromagnetic spectrum is being modulated from down under.  Not from Aussie-land but from?  The Navy's low frequency radio communications?  I watch as the colors in the day change in front of my eyes as this modulation distorts reality.  Too much electricity in the air, especially of the low frequency, eventually will kill the planet.  We are well on our way.  The arctic caps are melting.  We are cooking the earth.  We are cooking our on brains into senseless genocide.  Never before has America had a problem with citizens shooting themselves with no motive.  Senseless hypothetical mass murder.  Even there is no enemy.  "I don't have a girlfriend!  Blame the community college students!"  These people are watching a movie.  "Kill them!"  She is talking on television and is too happy.  "Kill her!"  We live in unprecedented times.  Chaos has ensued.  Anarchy has begun, and yet still we as a nation are too timid to recognize and acknowledge our true assailants.  We would rather treat their victims.    

America's Extinction of Music

I have read several articles posted on Facebook about the "death" of America's music industry.  First we must clarify what America's music industry was.  In short the answer is record labels.  A record label is a company that records, produces, markets, and sells music on either a vinyl album, a cassette tape, or a compact disc.  From a band members point of view, a musician who plays music professionally for live audiences, possibly this would be a new experience.  In America's short history there have been documented successes and catastrophes in the record industry.  A few of the latter would be Prince losing the rights to his own music, and Michael Jackson purchasing the Beetle's entire catalog.  Music like the rest of corporate America became a stock.  The stock market is what has ruined America's economy.  When buying and selling a product usurps the importance of that product and eventually undermines its production, a problem is created.  This is what has happened to America's music industry.  The savvy professionals who used to control the music industry such as Quincy Jones and Dave Grusin have aged out, and we have been left with a newer generation who have not experienced America's real music.  What do I mean by real music?  I mean a religion of music where real human bodies collaborate, perform, record, and sell music on an artistic level.  This product is far more than the faux music being presented today on the global level.  We could say mass marketing music is what has killed our music industry.  The temptation of the hedge fund has influenced all financial instruments, and owners of stock want only to see profits from their investments.  We are not taking the time to understand or appreciate our own products.  It is all about the money, and as I watch and listen to media today this is reinforced.  It has become fashionable to accrue wealth, and consequently we have a new generation of "Yuppies."  It is frightening to acknowledge this.  In the early l980's there was a similar movement in business, and a young upwardly mobile populace of savvy intellectuals took control.  We were presented with a generation of Stepford Wives of both genders.  Polished, slick, hipsters (if truly they were) went about their business of making money.  This was the first generation.  Now we are faced with a second generation of yuppies created from the technology industry.  Quickly they have passed the majority of America, and this new industry has fed itself.  With very little effort our traditional products have been replaced with nary an objection.  It is, because the generation that has created them is using them.  Other generations have become obsolete.  Personally I do not take kindly to this generation hijacking my music industry, because it was not captured honestly.  In the common ruse of the Republican party, instead they changed the system to meet their needs.  Music created on and sold by the computer replaced the real music industry.  The most infuriating ramification of this metamorphosis is the devaluation of music as a commodity.  Yesterday on Facebook I read of an author who predicted this change, and I digress.  The idea that there is too much recorded music to which to listen is absurd.  It is absurd, because what we have abandoned as a nation is quality control.  The movement to glorify "the folks" in media is the black hole.  Abandoning a PROFESSIONAL music industry in lieu of amateur contestants vying for popularity longevity for music will not produce.  Instead it has killed America's music industry.  I think a majority of Americans do not welcome this change.  It is the generation who created this nemesis who is consuming it.  The rest of us idly stand by and observe.  As a professional musician, I am sick and tired of music's professional vocation being represented by this facade.  Pop culture, and I mean the most shallow and insignificant pop culture, is no determinant of music.  Possibly this is why a schism has been created between real musicians and the public.  Real musicians are so far above the level of our pop culture, they are being cast as saints.  In the classical world this erroneously is being exploited.  I listen to WCPE, but I tune out the commentary because it does not do justice to the creators of the music.  Instead classical music has its own social structure, which like pop culture damages rather than reinforces the value of their music.  I am involved with neither of these groups, and I have adjusted.  The group to which I do belong is small, and it is jazz music.  Throughout my lifetime jazz music always has been the mediator of musical bullshit, because it is intellectual music.  Not only is it intellectual, it is spiritual.  Not only is it intellectual and spiritual, it acknowledges the blues, slavery, and other crucial aspects of America's history and soul.  Conspicuously this is absent in our society today.  The idea that a newer  generation of technologically savvy entrepreneurs has accrued the majority of wealth in America at the expense of their own soul  a devil makes.  

The Loyal Order of the White Hairs and Jazz

Having been interested in and having studied jazz music and its history most of my life, it was perplexing to sit at Fayetteville's Botanical Garden and listen to transcriptions of authentic early jazz.  The arrangements were accurate, well chosen, and well played.  Possibly it was the best live brass sound ever I have heard. One must tip a hat both to doctors of music and orchestrally-trained trumpet players.  It even seemed to swing, "In Its Own Sweet Way."  After hearing the concert I began to feel it had been a little too sweet.  Sweet sound is good, but is it realistic?  That is an odd question.  What exactly is a dirty sound?  Jimi Hendrix could explain it with his own playing.  The presence of distortion or dissonance might constitute the definition of a dirty sound.  So could a flatus.  In any event the music was of quality, and like a 'Chopped' judge's cant, "Sounded good, looked good, and reminded me of early jazz."  Sweet could mean not exactly representative of reality today.  The world in which we live is not sweet.  On the contrary it is brutal.  I'm not sure it is brutal everywhere.  Certainly we are reminded, that in Europe they are dealing with the worst migration problem since World War ll.  Terrorism in Syria is driving citizens across borders into poverty.  This is not representative of life in America.  Is it necessary for us to see this in our newspapers and on television newscasts everyday?   This is not representative of our lives.  We should remain abreast of world events, but the campaign of fear and intimidation which has been raging since George W. Bush has run its course.  Americans are beginning to realize we cannot trust either our media or our elected officials.  President Obama is doing the right thing, but he will be moving on shortly.  "Wouldn't It Be Nice" to see a positive news story for a change?  Wouldn't it be nice to see news stories related to our own meager lives?  That no longer seems possible of because who has come to own our news agencies.  If one examines our news, obviously it becomes clear it is propaganda.  It is propaganda, and it is propaganda against the poor and middle class.  Let me rephrase.  It is propaganda in favor of the wealthy ruling class.  If you analyze it further, you could come to understand that that this wealthy ruling class could be considered oligarchic.  It is obvious this group of wealthy earners is not concerned with the majority of America.  They treat us with contempt.  Only they care for themselves.  Wow!  I believe that is unchristian, but this group has been trying to eradicate Christianity for a decade.  Eradicate Christianity?  That sounds like Extreme Islam, Jihad, Al Quaeda, or the Taliban.  It sounds like this group who have been raging holy war on America, but they are here.  They are controlling America from the inside.  My conclusion is America no longer belongs to Americans.   It is not a problem of Mexican immigration.  It is a problem of foreign businesses purchasing American companies.  Rupert Murdock is an example.  The American media never may recover.  It is not good.  Leave it to me to concoct a musical metaphor for this dichotomy.  Popular music could represent the oligarchy, and jazz music could represent the republic.  The republic continually has been quashed in the last decade to what it seems like a point of no return.  Jazz music, the republic, is one of America's true art forms if not her best, and it is nonexistent on both radio and television.  Without that reinforcement, exposure, or education jazz cannot survive in American lives.  We are too busy trying to make ends meet.  The voice of America, her soul and her history in music of the last one hundred years, is quiet.  The oligarchy effectively has pushed jazz to the side making way for their self-indulgent, shallow, immediate gratification.  It is true, and that statement is not a delusion.  I have come to realize in the past weeks that this oligarchy truly are those who do not understand or care to acknowledge jazz, jazz representing America's real voice and soul.  Instead they prefer Jimmy Buffet.  We must conclude that "Margaritaville" does not a national anthem make, but the oligarchy would have you believe it.  Popular music in some mystical way has brainwashed a large segment of the American population into believing that it is the only music.  It seems to have the hypnotic power of Adolph Hiter injected with methamphetamine.  It is interesting that the Nazi party declared jazz music an enemy of the state.  It was a music that had the power of infusing people with positive spirit.  What?  Music that has the power to empower?  Popular music does not do that.  Instead popular music glorifies itself, and yet we as a country have become junkies.  It is easier I suppose, gazing mindlessly at Miley Cyrus rather than searching for more uplifting music in our own music libraries.  I am faced with the task each day when I awake.  Do I rely upon WCPE to feed my soul with music, or do I make my own decisions?  Making your own decision about to what you will listen is more difficult.  You must think.  One does not have to think to turn on the radio.  While WCPE often does play music that enriches my soul, often it plays music from the classic period that in my perception reinforces classism.  The classic period was a time of court and nobility, and for the most part I do not want to be reminded of the constraints of that class system.  The music is quality, but it is laced with compliance and system.  I prefer my music to swing.  Swing?  I prefer the music to which I listen to acknowledge things other than itself.  I prefer for it to be plural.  I have enough trouble not overdosing on my own karma.  If I do take the time to choose my own music, rarely am I disappointed.  Lately it has been the piano preludes of Scribian, and they gloriously are refreshing.  I enjoy the freshness and independence of contemporary music.  I require it, because American society does not recognize this spirit.  As a whole American society has not evolved.  Still we are operating on a level of civil war.  Because society in America still is not equal and fair, confederate terrorism continues.  Possibly murder in America is a plea for recognition, respect, and opportunity.  Upon watching John Cassavetes film "She's So Lovely" it became clear to me that mental illness is a sane Christian's plea for sanity in an insane world.  Our country has become so aberrant and oligarchic that a humble God worshipping schmuck can't process it.  Instead they become artists and interpret the anarchy through their own creative minds often ending in an utter defense of their own sanity.  We can't win, so ultimately we kill our enemy.  It is a tragic state of affairs, one which Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn represent quintessentially.  My heart ached with compassion for their tormented souls and for the return of a sane America.  

With Liberty and Justice for All (Goodbye Mr. Chips)

Do these seminal words from America's "Pledge of Allegiance" include concepts of the civil rights movement?  While Francis Bellamy's infamous words adopted by Congress in 1942 do capsulize patriotic loyalty, the addition of an "equal opportunity employer" would have been fitting.  ?  Certainly liberty and justice for all were quintessential ideas in the forming of America.  The forefathers fervently were seeking freedom from the tyrannical rule of Great Britain.  I did not live during Colonial times, but tyranny is widespread throughout world history.  Wealth comes from forced slave labor, or at least slave-like labor, labor with little to no wages.  
Is it possible that feudalism still is the operant socioeconomic system in America?  Feudalism:  The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labor, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection.  [sic] Never have I believed in Capitalism, because capitalism is a direct product of politics.  Without politics there can be no capitalism.  Theoretically, as Arnold Schwarzenegger often says comically in the new Terminator film, Capitalism may have meant to represent "free markets."  We all know free markets are controlled by the haves, therefore politics should be a necessary component of capitalism.  I guess it is.  There is a presidential election in a year, and all ready the wheels are turning churning out candidates with fury.  What is the responsibility of this president?  There are several items that should be paramount to an effective president.  You could call them "campaign promises," but often we know these are not honored.  Candidates promise something to get elected, and soon after being elected must pay back nebulous undocumented contributions with the appropriate political decisions.  The president has become a figure head manipulated by big business.  (George Bush)  Truly if one did want to become America's president for the right reasons, a preservation of liberty, justice, and equal opportunity, I can suggest a few things.  First and foremost drug advertisements must be stricken from television.  We must come to understand that the drug lobby, the pharmaceutical industry, and America's medical establishment have become corrupt.  The Affordable Care Act was a reasonable and effective strike against them.  The Obama administration, while successful at passing this legislation, will move on in a year.  Although the Supreme Court did uphold the law, Republicans surely will be fueled by the medical lobby to continue to lob grenades at the legislation.  All ready they have punished the American public for being eligible and receiving Obamacare.  It is unconscionable.  These insurance premiums in one short year have increased four or fivefold almost negating Obamacare's original intention, affordable health insurance for the middle class.  My premium from Blue Cross Blue Shield more than doubled.  ? The Affordable Care Act is not the total solution.  The eradication of the influence of "Big Insurance" and "Big Pharma" is the key.  While we as Americans may appreciate the convenience of big business making our medical decisions, we know it is a travesty.  We tolerate it, and often consequently we die.  Only if we bring fire and brimstone down on our medical providers do they do the right thing.  Otherwise regardless of our illnesses doctors continue to hawk their wares.  It seems to me they are not interested in the intellectual gratification of solving your medical issue.  They are interested in making money, hence "Try a colonoscopy.  I sure know how to do this procedure, because I was trained and have been doing them a long time."  But diagnosing an abdominal illness....  with no lab tests, not procedures, and no support from the machine.  I must digress.  They don't have time for you.  You are not making them money.  Drug advertisements must be stricken from television.  They are misleading, confusing, and laced with subliminal messaging.  Above all they are pointless.  If we could rely upon honest doctoring in America, doctors are the ones responsible for understanding drugs and their effects.  Why should geriatric America be laden with this responsibility?  It is simple.  It is a campaign of fear and intimidation.  Academia has become the same.  Tuition rates are ridiculous.  They empower academics, and this discourages learning.  I recommend a national system.  All academic institutions must be a part of a national organization subject to observation and the possible regulation of a qualified...  Oh sorry.  Do we all ready have a Department of Education?  They are just as sorry as the Department of Wildlife Conservation.  (if there is such a thing)  None of these federal agencies does the right thing.  They are pawns of big business.  No one has the little man's back.  If a university trains students to be academic doctors, then where are the jobs?  The jobs are held ad naseum until the professors get tired.  (This is a lifetime)  The opportunities that should be available to new graduates are held by their own professors.  ?  I suggest a rotation in a federal system.  This is not a "No Child Left Behind."  This simply is a mandatory visiting professor clause, which would require professors, tenured or not, to circulate leaving their jobs open periodically.  Professors should circulate, gainfully employed, but in different geographical areas.  What enlightenment could occur engaging new unbiased contingencies of the American population.  The ability to relocate is a large favorable accomplishment on a thickly padded resume.  Quickly it negates nepotism, favoritism, and political bias.  You may be a big fish in Chapel Hill, Mr. Chips, but try on St. Louis for size.  Yes!  I can imagine professional sports, great food, and jazz music a large improvement make over midlands North Carolina.  Erskine Bowles no longer has your back.  No one has your back.  You are on your own, one large and grandiose stipulation of an academic.  You must be an independent scholar.  Good luck with that.  

"Damn Yankees, I Mean Commies!"

Maybe Dick Cheney is a commie.  Maybe many of the wealthy elitist businessmen in America are Reds.  Maybe they used to be on a list back in the day, a time when America searched for and persecuted American citizens with a communist interest.  What kind of publications do you read?  Do you attend party events?  Reds. Commies.  We as a nation have lost track.  Are we not interested anymore?  Is China too far away, further than the U.S.S.R, to drum up anticommunist support?  Certainly North Korea is in the public eye as is Iran, but commies?  Reds?  Once upon a time in America this battle was paramount.  It helped define America as did our nightly television schedule.  That line up of programs on network TV before the cable explosion helped define a nation.  We lived by it, that televisions schedule.  We waited patiently for the new schedule in the fall and new shows.  Now it is all gone.  Tim Cook speaking with Charlie Rose a year ago scorned this television schedule.  Whether he acknowledges it or not as CEO of Apple, television once was an art form.  It came out of vaudeville, stage, theater, Broadway, and the minstrel shows.  Once television was entertainment, and it was approached with the same respect and devotion as other art forms.  Then television required talent and when it was excellent, artistry.  Craft can substitute in a pinch, but the performers were shooting for artistry.  Now it is all gone.  Time/Life bought it all, and now they are selling it in boxed sets for a hundred dollars a pop.  I have bought some of it.  The thing is, we used to get it for free.  We used to have clean drinking water for free.  We used to have clean air and a cooler planet.  Now we have "reality."  Flick on the box and watch your coworkers fill time with lame, uninteresting, emotionally laden soap.  The Golden Age of Hollywood has continued.  While there may not be lavish musicals, still we have movies that are well-made and cared for.  Film continues, but television is dead.  Why is television dead?  Ask Tim Cook.  It is so antiquated, that interface sitting in your family room with your loved ones.  I think that is a gay thing.  In America we lived our lives with and by that box, and it was a good thing.  It gave us direction.  It gave us a mainstream.  It gave us unity.  Now we have nothing, except a handful of lame late night talk show hosts.  The guys that bent the shaft, that questioned and ridiculed the man, and thought for themselves as adults bailed.  The void in late night TV is inescapable.  The thing is, I don't want to choose the schedule.  That's what a CEO is for.  It is his job to hone that talent, begin careers, and satisfy America viewing tastes.  Naw, screw it.  Anything goes.  The same is true with music.  Let's just not care about anything excellent.  I am getting deja vu.  Slackers?  Grunge?  Baggie pants?  Flannel?  Low key?  They had a voice, and it was music.  That movement had a message, a voice, and a following.  Today our voice is Kanye West, and he is not qualified to be on stage as a musician.  It is bought and paid for.  While I have empathy for Bruce Jenner, and watching him transition is entertaining to me for some reason, he is just another aging frustrated man looking for notoriety?  Is he?  I would like to know more.  Is he leaving his 'wife?'  Does he not love her anymore?  Does he have feelings for men, or does he just like to dress in women's clothes to get off?  Join the club.  I don't think Bruce Jenner would have gotten a television show otherwise.  Is that motivation enough to change your sex?  Television is not what it used to be.  Reality is a term effectively which eliminated the competition.  In one fell swoop artistry was erased from consciousness.  Boom.  That seems like a commie thing to me...

The Myth of a SuperHero

America officially has been inducted into the Superhero Hall of Fame.  Sony's commitment to blur the boundary between realism and animation has succeeded.  We are a mash of neurosis, dreams, and the elite forces of superheros, but they aren't real.  Sony would like for you to believe they are real.  That was their intent, to blur the boundary between realism and animation.  How would a maladjusted child know the difference?  Hour upon hour of rote playing of violent warlike video games is not reality.  With the condition of our public education system, environment, and economy kids are on their own.  Go figure when a neglected soul decides to burn out in a blaze of glory.  Superheros are not a practical example for reality, and yet they have proliferated.  Not only are superheros found in graphic novels, film, television, and 'them internets,' they are controlling our lives via corporate America and academia.  I almost have a doctorate degree in music, and all around me are musicians frantically trying to reinvent the wheel.  "Relax, mon.  Music is important, but it is not the most important thing."  Today if you resume doesn't read like that of a superhero, evidently you are not qualified to have a job.  Can we get real please?  I am sick to my stomach of reading exaggerated resumes, VITA files, and biographies.  It could begin with college professors.  I would like to know if they have anything to offer.  I don't need to hear about performances all over the world, publications, and grants.  If they are so busy attaining this, how can they make time for teaching?  How can they make time to impart grassroots knowledge which could help a student grow?  It's ludicrous, and it is not real.  These are fabricated images which lie to the public in the name of selfishness.  Maybe we can dispense with the superheros for a minute and concentrate on doing things that will save the earth.  Maybe we can save the refugees?  That is not superhero material.  It doesn't stroke your ego.  Where is the Clinton Foundation?  In a time of crisis in Europe, where are these charitable foundations?  Bill?  Bill.  Mr. Clinton?  Mr. Gates?  Google?  Here is an opportunity of philanthropical importance.  Save some refugees?  Jimmy Carter would be in.  A Bush daughter?  We're too busy trying to invent the autonomous automobile, which is not this at all.  Like Uber self-driving cars are merely a restructuring of previously predicted models of the future.  Call them trams?  Call them mono-rails?  Call them pods?  Whatever.  Electrically powered systems of mass transit already have been invented.  They are called trains and subways, but that is not millennial or fashionable.  How you make ta vehicle go where you want it to is with track.  Go figure?  Self-driving cars in Los Angeles?  Thank you, but no thanks.  "Spin City" is off the air and out of politics, but it has entered the world of corporate America.  I don't want to read about fictitious superheros.  I don't want to hear about how much money millennials have amassed.  It is peanuts, and it is boring.  It is based on an iPhone, and who cares?  When the wireless network in America comes crashing down, none of it will matter.  Sony has learned its lesson.  Blurring the lines between reality and animation is not a prudent model for survival.  When we pull our heads out of our asses, the stench of suffocating greenhouse gas not a superhero will create.  It is time to wake up America.  Resume:  Past Experience:  Cook, Gardener, Mechanic.  "You're hired."  The rest of you can sit in a room and play video games.  

The Underground Railroad

Dear Pen Pal,

    Truly I would like the military to finish its current training exercise.  I understand Communist China is parading their weaponry to commemorate the anniversary of the end of World War ll.  I understand that Vladimir Putin is flexing his atrophied biceps.  I understand that ISILanemous continues to rage havoc on Syria.  I suggest deployment.  Finish loading the two-mile-long war train underneath Reilly Rd, finish building your access points and loading docks for this train, and stop training.  Go kill the enemy.  I have had enough of the training, both literally and figuratively.  I don't know whose great idea it was (General Electric) to put a slow moving conveyor belt underneath the ground in New Mexico.  (It is out of business, the Chevron Questa mine.)  After over a decade of complaints finally our EPA shed it yes men, lobby addicted, dead weight and decided to do its job.  It didn't take long for China and the EPA to close down that Moly mine.  Like Duke Power there were infractions everywhere, the most popular of course is dumping their waste into our rivers.  The Taos Hum is no more I will conclude.  I don't know whose great idea it was (B.R.A.C. generals or Ashton Carter) to put a portion of the Cape Fear Railways underneath Reilly Rd.  I understand this decision from a point of national security and terrorist threat.  Munition trains would be a likely target for whom?  At the world's largest military installation, I'm not sure a would be terrorist could get on post.  They could have ten years ago, but not now.  With the B.R.A.C expansion Ft. Bragg is transforming from a modest army installation into?  I would guess that underground railroads, not the kind of Harriet Tubman, would be synonymous with our missile control center buried in the mountains of?  New Mexico!  Give that man a prize.  Isn't it New Mexico, or is it Nebraska?  With Ground Forces Command being moved to Ft. Bragg, I would think underground is the new fifty.  I don't know whose great idea it was to put the Army's SD60MAC's underneath the ground.  Didn't we learn a lesson from Taos?  The pollution and radiation from low frequency drives and its electrical processing equipment travels faster through the earth than it does through the air.  Placing it underground and having it run 24/7 only is going to create havoc with Fayetteville residents, or is that even a concern?  

Communism, Socialism, and Erudite Millennials

When I grew up my cousins on the Greene Farm, like many people in America, fervently felt that "Commies" were the enemy.  It was surprising to me when we traveled to the farm, because I not yet was old enough to take exception with anyone except the bullies in my neighborhood.  Only now in the last few days have I realized, that I am not an American, or rather I do not share the same life's philosophy of those around me.  Americans seem to worship capitalism as a graven image, and passionately their political sentiment is refusing to recognize a potential danger to their health, or criticizing a pundit for distracting them from their capitalist lives.  Old school railroad workers are like this, or at least the ones I have met.  It is a story right out of Appalachia similar to the Hatfields and the McCoys.  It is frightening this animalistic behavior defending one's property to the death unable to consider rational negotiations. This seems to be the way we are in America.  Americans are so brainwashed with capitalism, the pursuit of money for survival, that nothing else matters.  Each time I point out or complain the art no longer matter, well.  I get it now, the response.  They don't want to hear it.  If you don't fit into that big, mindless, roaming herd, than you are a malcontent.  Fitting into that herd is as paramount as scratching for pennies in the ground.  What is a "Commie" anyway?  It is slang for a Communist, and upon reflection I don't think the citizens of communist countries  have much choice about their socioeconomic systems.  Communism is government by rule, and as Americans we feel it is a threat to our freedom.  If you had met Russian immigrants, say like Irving Berlin, you would see people exactly like us.  They did not have a choice the socioeconomic system into which they were born.  This is why they immigrated to the America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.  This is why many nationalities of American citizens immigrated to the U.S.  We are a country of immigrants, except ironically for our own Native Americans who we abused, murdered, and excluded as savages.  The term "Commies" should be applied to the leaders of these systems, and they are famous.  Never have I understood the impetus for the derogatory connotation of the term "Socialist."  Only now have I come to realize, that no one in America seems to understand it. Instead it is a blind fight of us against the enemy.   We sling the term about mindlessly, as did my cousins on the farm.  It gives them a purpose.  It seems we in America are afraid of something.  I have traveled to many other countries, and none of them are as blindly passionate as Americans.  Americans are selfish.  Socialists are not, because they have been around a long time and understand  camaraderie can be more important than money.  There is a great likelihood many of us never will have money, but that does not mean we cannot live effectively.  In many ways you will live more effectively without money, because you will be forced to realize and understand things which more are important to humankind.  Maslow's hierarchy of needs is telling, but if we travel through his studied continuum we will develop a foundation and understanding of our own existence.  Wealth in America has become problematic.  B-I-N-G!  There it goes again, a sting that those surrounding me in America don't agree.  "Why are you making waves?  Why are you chewing on sour grapes?"  I am not making the point, because I am unhappy or poor.  Neither is true.  I am making the point, because most of those living around me who are not wealthy are unhappy.  Is Capitalism the idea of having to buy one's happiness?  I think not, and America was not begun that way.  While Puritan Americans often perished in the harsh conditions of North America, with their challenges came beauty and spirituality.  These are the things that keep me upright each day.  When I am able to indulge my senses in a positive way, I am at peace.  Unfortunately modern America and the mechanisms that are creating the wealth are infringing upon that freedom.  Each day my sight, sounds, smells, and and tactical feelings are challenged with negative influences.  I have come to understand that many of those around me do not notice.  They are not capable of understanding or perceiving spiritual or physical beauty.  It is not important to them.  What is?  It is like being surrounded by rabid animals or mad cow disease.  There is no rationale.  There is no logic.  Only is there aggression and chaos.  This has begun to affect my own philosophy of life, because I am having to care more about my own wellbeing  than I should.  I do not wake on an even playing field.  It is slanted sharply in many directions, and often I feel the opponent laughing at me before I begin the game.  Then I remember this is what it feels like to be Jesus or a Christian.  I don't know what we have become in America, but although openly we do not decapitate lost sheep we do.  America's capitalism is no different than Extreme Islam.  Each sacrifices its own weakest links in the sake of money and power.  It is gratifying that many important issues affecting the quality of life in America have been dealt with by our president.  Only history will show how effective of a president he has been.  The antithesis to the quality of life in America for those who are not wealthy shout "Socialist" without ever taking the time to understand what it means.  It is apparent to me that America's new pseudonym must be changed from Nottinghamshire to Appalachia.  Our indigenous people are no different than the Viet Cong living in the tunnels of Chu Chi.  We defend our land without an understanding of our own existences.  "Squeal like a pig boy."  

A Little ISIL Etiquette

As I was working in the yard this afternoon, the first afternoon in which a pleasantly surprising Caribbean tropical low enveloped us in Fayettenam, I began to ponder the enigma of ISIS. (or ISIL)  Full well I know about this group.  How could one not with their extreme and murderous propaganda in the media.  It is not unlike the SS, the gestapo, and the Nazi party.  I have to remind myself that the mass genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany was not that long ago.  While there seems to have been a break in the pattern, if one looks mass genocide has circulated the globe.  One only has to look under a rock in Africa to find heinous atrocities against humanity.  My lesson learned is although we in America during my lifetime have been spared direct contact with mass genocide on a national level, never has it stopped.  Perhaps 9/11 was meant to be a reminder of how other countries continue to suffer and America tools own as her own self-proclaimed superpower.  I have learned in my lifetime it is best to live in the trenches.  It is wise and prudent to hide what you have and live with humility.  Johnny Depp could attest to this widely disseminated midwestern cultural trait.  One does not grandstand as millennials do today.  (Am I wrong to blame it on the millennials?)  Perhaps I am judging to harshly from my viewpoint as a professional musician.  That is the way it appears to me.  There is very little music, and there is a lot of hype.  There is a lot of narcissism.  There is a lot of misogyny.  I mean fuck me dude.  I always liked Dr. Dre.  It took me many months to find Snoop Dog's single "What's My Name, Part ll."  Still I listen to it, but I don't want to hear about Mr. Dre becoming a billionaire and hating women.  These things do not interest me.  What interests me is savvy music making.  What happens as a result of fame before maturity?  Well.  I am not saying Dr. Dre has not chosen a wise financial planner.  I am saying that a life of excess in many cases can kills its constituents.  That is the history of Rock 'n' Roll. That is the history of jazz.  That is the history of Hip Hop.  Still I miss the influence of an East Coast West Coast battle to produce quality Hip Hop music.  I don't miss the juvenile gangsta drive by shooting.  Then again these rival music production posses could have been acting in the same pattern as the Italian mafia, to which I do not brandish scorn.  While many died in the violence of the mob, in certain ways these men lived a certain lifestyle that was not afforded them in the good old U.S. of A.  Are we being afforded everything we deserve today in America, by government, by our neighbors, and by businesses?  I think not, and that is why I continue to rage against the machine.  Upon reflection and my life of half a century it brutally is apparent to me that Americans are not afforded a percentage of what previous generations had, the Baby Boomers to be specific.  This generation made out.  They had military reserve pensions, they had civic pensions, they had social security, they had retirement plans, they had full medical coverage, and they had influential jobs within a community who controlled themselves.  That is not the case today.  Today we have an oligarchy.  Comparatively speaking the youth of today are living in barren desert enveloped by murderous sand.  It is not unlike predicted lifestyles post apocalypse, but they don't know it.  It is slim pickings.  There is no free love, except the free love on "them internets."  By free love I mean a cultural movement which has rebelled against mainstream society and has decided to mark their own territory.  Metaphorically this movement could be represented by getting high and riding a bus around the country trying to get laid.  I can think of worse things to do for enlightened people, and that is the quicker.  The people who participated in the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test were educated people.  They chose to live this way as did Paul Bowles and other expatriate American artists.  They chose a Bohemian lifestyle over what was being offered in America at the time.  Upon returning to America after twelve years abroad working on ships, still I cannot find one ounce of appeal of the lifestyle afforded to the average American.  It sucks.  Education sucks, and I am an educator.  I possess a Bachelor of Music Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Never have I taught public school, because its lifestyle was not good enough for me.  After diligently preparing myself for sixteen years, a life in North Carolina public education was the last thing on my list that appealed to me.  Perhaps it had something to do with my student teaching experience.  Other than the inexplicable and exorbitant amount of hard core pornograpy available free on them internets, I can find nothing appealing about modern day life in America.  Television has been purchased and is marketing erroneous propaganda, music is childlike, and the once adult perceptions we knew about our world have been capped.  We as Americans have been censored.  It is a brutal existence.  it is a brutal existence that has led to mass murder on streets, in theaters, in businesses, and on military bases.  Still the infuriating murmur among politicians and survivors is gun control.  Gun control is not the answer to America's murder problem.  We are too afraid to take the time to look at the lives of those who have committed this murder.  We are too egotistical, we are too busy, and we are too vain.  First let me clarify I do not know who is and should be responsible for researching adolescent murders.  I assume it would fall into the category of mental health.  Psychological health care in America has been reduced sharply even with the continual return of combat troops in the Middle East. Many necessary social programs that are integral to the health of America has been put on old.  Its seems our government can't find the money to fund them, or they believe these programs are unnecessary.  All we have to do is ask ourselves why would an adolescent commit such a violent hate crime and tend to those causes.  No, America will do as the American medical establish has done.  We will treat the symptoms and continue to go to the bank every day.  If we cure cancer, all of those worker bees will lose their jobs.  It is far better a society of chaos.  We have this chaos, and maybe it is interesting to the gods.  Maybe the great wealthy families observe the arena of life from their ivory balconies and revel in it.  They laugh, yet one day it may catch up to them.  That could be the day when Jesus Christ returns to the earth to judge all men living and dead.  When the earth is destroyed, from what balcony will those gods stand?  In the mean time despondent America youths are suicidal.  They may not be suicidal in terms of actually ending their lives.  They may be suicidal in a value assessment that dying may be more interest than living their lives in the same pattern.  Their lives are what we are afforded today in America.  Not much.  A fast talking Easterner shows interest in you.  He entices you with ideas of training and fighting for a cause. This cause is not your parents, your teachers, or the bullies who follow you every day.  They offer you an independence from Uncle Sam, the man, and our menial everyday lives.  They make you feel needed and important, and then they tell you with this heroic act you will be remembered as a martyr.  This sounds pretty enticing to me compared to life in America.  Lost sheep are everywhere, and until we recognize them and tend to their needs, terrorism will continue.  After returning to America after twelve years a broad working on ships, I do not want to be competitive with my neighbor.  This is what we are required to do.  Capitalism is and always has been a fucked up socioeconomic system, and we are living in is sand-enveloped desert.  (P.S.  I don't have much to lose writing this, because either FBI or Department of Homeland Security planes have been circling my house for days)  It's interesting America knows how to pick a fight even with the most docile of figures.  I seek peace, serenity, privacy, and adulthood, and I am offered aerial antagonism.  I don't much like pondering defection mode.  I would just rather make music.  

Thin Lizzy and the Taos Hum

It is interesting when stars collide.  It is interesting when shit goes down which validates your personal opinion.  It is interesting when disparate elements are juxtaposed revealing a greater understanding of an seemingly unknown nuisance or even murderer.  Tonight was such a night.  To the dismay of my mother she and hundreds of other Fayetteville citizens  first hand were exposed to the Taos Hum.  The Taos Hum.  I'll say it again.  The Taos Hum.  The Taos Hum is a combination of annoying low-frequency sound and vibration produced by a General Electric-built slow moving conveyer belt buried beneath the ground in New Mexico.  It transports the mined element Molybdenum.  How did this annoying General Electric-built slow moving conveyer belt buried beneath the ground in New Mexico find its way back stage at Festival Park in Fayetteville, North Carolina?  It was puzzling for about half an hour.  The hum was there louder than anything on the stage (a Journey cover band) and louder than the ambient noise created by traffic flow over the Rowan Street bridge.  The crowd was noisy, but you couldn't hear them for the hum.  The hum appeared instantly first perceived to be in the P.A. system of the Festival Park concert.  It was masked by a large freight train traveling on CSX-T's mainline directly behind the stage.  There was a combination of elements (noise) juxtaposed revealing two trains.  One was traveling, and the other was sitting downtown near Festival Park.  When the traveling train passed the hum increased in intensity until we could see its source.  Another train.  This train (or rather locomotive consist) pulling a very long stretch of evidently very heavy cars was giving birth.  Electricity had built up in its electrical processing to a massive level to create a strong enough magnetism to pull these cars.  Traction motors.  AC traction motors.  DC traction motors.  Tesla.  AC induction motors.  Blah blah.  No one in the Federal Railroad Administration or the EPA could give a shit about this hum.  Ho hum.  Taos Hum.  Humbert Humbert.  Hummmm, hmmmm.  Where's my mum? Delores Hayes would not like the Taos Hum, and she would not have liked this incident completely overshadowing the musical performance of the Army Ground Forces Band.  The interesting thing was this hum was omni-directional.  Low frequency sound is omni-directional.  While the train squirted low frequency alternating current to its traction motors to make their rotors turn (axles), that massive amount of built up electrical power created a yet undiscovered phenomenon.  It was the Taos Hum.  It was a black cloud of angry, pulsating, vibrating, electrical energy louder than anything in the entire park or the whole city of Fayetteville.  Then it just stopped.  Poof.  The train is moving, the dangerous electrical "harmonics" are lost, and it speeds on its merry way at frequencies of far less consequence to the human organism.  Cancer is caused by the irradiation of healthy cells by electromagnetic energy.  Electromagnetic energy is an indispensable juxtaposition of electricity and magnetism.  Thus it creates an electromagnet, a rotating electromagnetic force that is strong enough to turn the axles of lengthy, heavy, fully-loaded freight trains.  That is some magnetism, and anyone living within a few clicks of it might take heed.  It ain't for the light of heart.  I have been cursing it for decades, yet tonight for he first time in full glory, the hum about which I have been ranting made itself known in a grandiose way.  It was the mysterious oeger behind the Festival Park stage.  Because it is transportable, CSX-T can send it wherever they please.  That is a fair amount of power for a transportation company.  I am positive it is not included in the mission statement on their corporate website. For sale.  The Taos Hum, but we will send it to you for free as a parting gift for enjoying the energy we produce by hauling coal to Duke Energy power plants.  We are responsible for destroying the Ozone and your body's cells at the same time! 

Living a Reverse Chronology

I have not been honest with myself.  My musical success does matter to me.  It matters, because of the oppressive boredom that ensues while not being musical.  Music is a double-edged sword.  In a nurturing and pristine environment music can provide emotional fulfillment, intellectual stimulation, and fun.  In a not conducive environment laced with dishonesty, vanity, and greed music becomes a step child, something to be degraded, beaten, and discarded.  This is because it is good.  I have experienced both things.  The latter part of my life has become the latter edge of the double-edged sword.  Music is a danger to me.  Like all things good, they become a target for the enemy.  This target is so coveted that each and every opportunity to excel at music must be destroyed.  Far it is easier to become a musical monk, and in ways this is what I have become.  It reduces the anxiety of trying to be musically successful.  My musical success only ever has been detrimental to me in one situation.  It is the situation I am in now.  Thus I am faced with the difficult decisions regulating my musical output.  For the most part, they are few, because they are not rewarded.  They, like my sexual appetite, are used by others.  It seems America has become a society of john's, and we use whores as our bitches.  We do not applaud and appreciate our artists.  This is why popular music has turned into one big selfish wonk.  (I want to use the word (w)ank, but the spell correction on Google Blogger will not allow me.)  View any current music awards show and horror will ensue.  It has become an atrocity.  Shallow music, shallow people, and vanity.  The message of the music and of the bands no longer is important.  We as Nottinghamshire have become deaf to the sound of uplifting sound.  Our brains are too diminished to accommodate something that is Christ-like.  Christianity demands sacrifice, knowledge, and humanity.  America no longer is capable of such things.  Instead we survive at the most primitive level unable to perceive our own meager existences.  I only can wonder if those Oxford-educated Harvard professors enjoy their lives, because it is the hippies that hold the key.  

A Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I rail a lot about the inadequacy of modern day America.  America is adequate for a few things.  We are adequate for imperialism.  We want Afghani poppies, and so we have them.  We are adequate for logistical transport.  We need a way to ship Afghani poppies, so we use our well-prepared fighting force.  We are adequate for bullying.  Instead of leaving the Middle East the way ISIS and ISIL desire, we linger collecting their poppies.  It seems collecting the poppies is far easier than tapping the massive oil reserve in Iraq, a nation we destroyed when creating ISIS and ISIL.  Still the price of oil has plummeted without harvesting that Iraqi oil.  Now ISIS and ISIL must have it.  Usually they sell it to France and Russia.  We are adequate for harboring fugitives, not illegal immigrants, but legal law-breaking corporations who out-source our American jobs abroad, launder money in Grand Cayman banks, and do what exactly in America?  They sell us their backassward, unregulated, crap products at an inflated rate compared to our wages.  Then they lobby Washington, so they can continue to lie about what is in these products.  We are adequate for stealing land from native populaces like poor African-Americans living in the Ninth Ward in post-Katrina New Orleans.  (Those elderly black people have no business with that real estate anyway)  Trumpism.  We as America are adequate for the useless and wasteful driving of automobiles instead of utilizing mass transportation as say Europe does.  It would seem America is a nation of excess, excess for the rich.  At one point in history these rich perceived a need to reinvest in us.  This is what creates an economy.  Pouring money back into goods and services, filling the pockets of Americans, and creating a burgeoning healthy economy is good for America.  Instead now we strangle Americans like the poor immigrants we are.  We are not adequate for medical care.  It is more cost effective, honest, and empathetic almost anywhere else in the world that is not a third world country.  It would seem these other countries never have been "superpowers" and therefore do not have a wasteful and selfish model to base themselves upon after obliterating every conceivable trace of the Christian religion and the presence of God.  We are adequate for producing cheap natural gas and polluting our ground water source at the same time.  While this may not be an issue now, it will be presently.  When God returns to earth and retrieves saved Christians to transplant to His other earth-like planet we may all ready have discovered, and when the oceans boil and fire reigns down from the skies potable water will become an issue.  It should be now, and the solution is not to buy it from Nestle or Pepsico.  We have become adequate at selling our once free and clean drinking water, breathing air, and comforting silence back to us.  Now we must pay for it, and the status quo of the common existence for Americans is poverty, violence, and thus murder.  No longer can we feel good from just our environment.  It has become so polluted, the playing field of the American Dream has been tilted at forty-five degrees allowing Republicans to litigate the minutia of political and economic control.  They are good at splitting legal hairs on a bought and paid for table.  When I think about the current Condition of America in America today, I can devise no model except utter selfishness.  It's a bitch being alone. 

Merry Robin Hood in America

The appointing of an academic to a federal cabinet position in American government is paradoxical.  The appointing of Holden Thorp to the chancellorship at UNC-Chapel Hill also was paradoxical.  Erskine Bowles baited his trap, and Holden took the bait.  Upon reflection it is copacetic.  Academia, under the tutelage of George Bush, has gone the way of corporate America.  No longer is it a grass roots organization to provide enlightenment to students.  It has become big business, and in America big business has become "Fuck you," to the American people.  Big business has become we will make as much money as humanly possible.  Screw humanity.  Screw the planet.  It is of interest the the earth and humanity are expendable.  We are on a course of extinction, and yet no one in big business seems to care.  In fact big business is the cause of this misguided course.  Could it be academics in high ranking cabinet positions in America's federal government cover this up?  Does the Washington lobby line their pockets with power and money?  Is this why 100% of the legislative decisions made by Congress do not consider public opinion?  We no longer are America.  A new name for this country must be coined.  Perhaps Nottinghamshire?  We have since 1776 become the same country against we rebelled with our Revolutionary War.  Perhaps we no longer are British, but certainly we have an aristocracy.  While America is a republic, no longer are we democratic.  Democracy has failed as has capitalism.  The economy in America has failed for a few simple reasons.  Americans do not have enough money to spend.  Therefore the businesses that have made America tick over the last two centuries now are defunct.  Americans cannot afford to buy their products.  Often I wonder why all of the traditional cultural trends of America have died.  Fashion is dead.  Music is dead.  Somewhere a while back the legends of the fashion industry died off and someone made the decision that ugly, skinny, waifs now were to be America's fashion models wearing loin cloths.  The traditional model of fashion, like art, became an anything goes.  Television is like this today.  There is no artistry.  There is no concept.  There is no talent.  Anything goes as Cole Porter would pen.  In his case anything was bisexuality.  So be it.  There have been few greater American songbook composers, just as there have been few greater classical composers than Tchaikovsky.  I listened to his violin concerto last evening on WCPE, and it was remarkable.  Nottinghamshire is not remarkable.  We are mediocre.  The only way America can retain the title of superpower is with our Department of Defense.  Under the leadership of newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Ashton Kutcher, surely the fond memories of Viet Nam will return, and we will laugh at them.  I never pondered the idea that a Cabinet Secretary in our federal government was a CEO, and yet that exactly is how Ashton Carter is painted in an interesting article by a past Washington Post and New York Times writer.  Carter ejected Ted Gup from his class on national security, although he was a fellow of the Harvard's Shorenstein  Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy.  Gup has yet to stop bristling.  Why would Professor Carter make such a spectacle?  It seems he has a reputation for callus and unruly behavior, but we as the American people would not know this.  Seldom upon he is reported.  The answer to that predicament lies in an enlightening video presentation posted on Facebook.  While I have come to understand that Facebook is both a culturally worthless and dangerous social media application, providing an almost public platform upon which to voice opinions is useful.  Most often it is not used for this, and it should be.  I can't remember the author of a particular video posted on Facebook reflecting upon the history of slavery in America.  It was telling.  It was telling because for the first time someone else explained what always I have known about America's media.  They are owned by the same big businesses that run America.  They are pawns of corporate Nottinghamshire who locate their headquarters in any other country except their own.  Often I rant about the growing uselessness of technology and computing.  We can compute faster, but the ideas have died.  No longer do we care about innovation or ideas in America.  We care about money.  When the earth dies, what will you do with that useless paper tender?  No one has stopped to understand that the iPhone is a bad idea, and that it has changed American culture for the worst.  No one has stopped to understand that a majority of Americans are walking around socially dysfunctional staring into their palms.  No one has because Apple has posted record profits with sales of its iPhones.  Whose responsibility is it to point out that corporate profits do not matter to humanity?  Once it was academia, but that great organization has run the course of big business.  When there are no commodities and thus no jobs to sell them, it is pointless.  We live a pointless existence, and I am struggling to ascribe meaning to it.  This meaning for me has turned from the creation of meaningful music to an interest in reestablishing a healthy American economy devoid of technology.  Technology, contrary to popular belief, has killed our economy.  It has converted a once individualistic free-thinking society into submissive and docile Borg.  Big business has won, and America has lost.  

America's Military Industrial Complex

Often I write about the demand of submission.  The town currently in which I live often demands this submission.   Figuratively I have written about this submission without specifically explaining what it is.  Submission?  The action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.  Today only a few minutes ago I was forced into submission by my mother.    I was emasculated, because evidently I failed to complete two tasks only which had been agreed upon less then twenty-four hours ago.  I had not had time to assimilate these tasks into my daily routine.  I did know that the neglect of these two tasks severely would cause my mother acute emotional distress.  I was rushed preparing dinner last evening and mistakenly left a few green onion stems in our slop bucket on the kitchen countertop.  This is a grievous offense, and I knew it at the time.  I was in a rush, because friends were picking me up for a social outing in less than one hour.  Mistakenly I failed to comply to this newly agreed upon protocol.  One must empty the slop bucket directly after filling it.  The slop bucket now unbeknownst to me has become only a temporary vessel for the displacement of food scraps whilst cooking.  It used to be my mother would empty her own bucket, so never before was I taught the lesson that food spoils easily in ninety degree heat and stinks up the kitchen.  I learned it tonight.  Also I took the fall for this spoiled food making its way into our large, green, plastic city-supplied garbage can.  Also it stank to high heaven.  Because I was high on wine last night, these issues avoided my attention.  Be assured that they were made my primary focus upon my mother's now discovered need to prepare her own dinner.  The combination was volatile.  A lack of the necessary evening meal combined with the stink of rotted food inside and outside made for a surly exchange of priorities.  It was not fun.  I was forced into submission.  I was emasculated by my mother.  While she will not admit it, the message was, "You had your social outing, and you have ignored me."  Message received loud and clear.  This is why I do not partake in evening social outings.  I stay at home.  The only social outings I do engage in are with my mother.  They are hers, and they are for her.  I do not enjoy them.  People do not know how to relate to a grown single man accompanying a matriarch.  When I step away it becomes easy, but I cannot.  Women are women, and like Donald Trump would assert, they at times are irrational.  Former Subway spokespeople enjoy child pornography and having sex with minors.  In the current Condition of America, we simply are defined by a mockingly ignorant, "He said, she said."  Our feeble gray matter can't assemble a conclusion, because we have no opinions upon which to draw.  Everything is okay.  I'm okay, you're okay, but we're not.  It is not okay for everything to be okay.  We are conditioned to say everything is okay, because it lessens the anxiety of contesting to the accumulation of wealth by America's and thus the world's oligarchy.  We are conditioned by eating mislabeled food, drinking poisoned water, being irradiated by microwaves, given cancer, and told to sit down and shut up.  Our submission is demanded.  Think not for one second that we are free in America.  We are not.  Other than my submission being demanded by my emotionally frustrated, malnourished, sarcastic mother, my submission is demanded by the world's largest military machine at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.  This is not a delusion.  The upkeep of the world's most capable fighting force is no walk in the park, especially when the 82nd Airborne is involved.  How you may ask is my submission demanded?  My submission is demanded by my urban environment's deluge with refuse from a military industrial complex.  Fayetteville after all is a military industrial complex.  It encompasses the nation's largest military base, and it encompasses industry.  We as citizens of Fayettenam live in the refuse of this complex, and the bulk of this refuse is elusive, invisible, harmless infrasound.  [sic] Reference Vladimir Gavreau.  This is not a delusion, but like the majority of corrupt evil things in America, it is spun.  Ashton Carter.  Did you know this man is the current Secretary of State in the Obama Administration?  I did not.  I had to Google it.  There has been no news about this man and his position, just like there is no news about any issues that deserve review by the American populace.  Newspeak doesn't work that way.  In l984 the real news was reported, and Big Brother changed it to suit his political motives.  This is what we have in America today, and it is frightening.  I was emasculated for not having washed out the slop bucket and garbage can leaving the smell of spoiled food inside and outside our meager middle-classed home.  Daily my submission and subsequent emasculation is required to believe the lies that circulate around me in the media.  Daily my submission and subsequent emasculation is required to ignore the raging war machine less than ten miles from our meager middle-classed home.  The earth shakes, the windows rattle, the aircraft strafe, and the two-mile-long war trains are assembled leaving my emotions confused and upset.  While the pro-military propaganda is rife, if you choose to ignore the fighting military presence subconsciously it begins to rage against you.  In other American cities mysterious daunting aircraft do not fly above the treeline between Fayetteville Regional Airport and Pope Field.  I have yet to discover the nature of each T-tailed, turbo-prop and jet, with an American flag painted on their tail.  I assume it is one of the forty odd Generals employed at Ft. Bragg going out for coffee.  I don't know which is worse, this never ending, paranoid, military machismo, or the corruption of our local medical establishment.  It is common knowledge that Ft. Bragg with its fifty-two thousand soldiers is ripe for the picking of local connoisseur professional people.  We have an ever-expanding Cape Fear Valley conglomerate which overprescribes, bilks, and kills local residents each year.  I know this because my aunt is a nurse in an area that has empathetic and professional health care.  They are not only concerned with the dollar as they seem to be here.  It is a shite state of affairs.  As I roam through the stores of Fayetteville I only can tell myself I am in a horrible dream and that these aging people never could allow a stranger to exist.  This is what capitalism is.  It is every man for himself.  Fuck your neighbor.  Never have I agreed with it, and at no other point in time in American history has our chosen socioeconomic system failed so drastically.  It has.  Capitalism has failed.  We no longer are free, and there only is anarchy to come.  America long is overdue for a revolution.  

Professor Emeriti

I'm not sure why I am getting angry.  I don't get angry very often.  I got angry yesterday, and I know why.  I have become a laid back person.  It is easier by far.  The American South, with its newly discovered Confederacy Predicament, still in the year 2015 demands your submission.  The neighborhood in which I live demands my submission frequently.  This week was one requiring my submission.  Emotionally and psychologically what I am doing is not supported.  I feel antagonized.  I have discovered that my musical interests wholly are not supported.  This notion is reinforced each and every time I post a music video of my own creation.  I am using the term "music video" loosely.  What I really mean is a poorly shot video of me playing musical instruments.  It varies from  Hammond organ, to jazz trumpet, to contemporarily classical piano.  When I write about my other interests including cooking and landscaping, people are interested and intrigued.  I guess they can connect.  When I post music videos the ensuing animosity is palpable.  I will admit I do not make preparations.  Having been a professional musician a majority of my life, always I am prepared to perform music.  It is why you prepare.  Years of music study and practice can yield such a thing.  I know and can perform music well enough to be employable when there is opportunity.  Those opportunities are scarce where I am living.  Sour grapes. My interests are not supported, because there are few that are doing what I am doing.  People can't relate.  I have a flurry of Cowtown friends who do relate.  Most of them are professional musicians.  I follow their activities, because I have worked with most of them when I lived in Columbus.  I feel a tangible connection with each and every "Friend" I have on Facebook who are musicians.  Conversely I have one musician friend in Fayetteville.  Instead what I feel is cold and blatant animosity.  I feel this because Fayetteville is a small clique of old money socialites.  I have not made any attempt to make my musical presence known.  There is no point, because I have not made my personal presence known.  If I did, it would be of no consequence, because Fayetteville is a small clique of old money socialites.  When I moved back home to help my mother with our house, repeatedly she would tell me, "You can't start at the top."  Start at the top?  I have been playing piano professionally on ships since 2002.  By far it is the most challenging music job ever I have had.  My collegiate years of study in composition are what allowed me to excel at this job.  The piano music is so poorly arranged and copied, that one needs compositional skills to figure out what to play.  I excel at this.  Previously I completed all course work necessary for the completion of a Doctorate of Musical Arts in Music Composition at The Ohio State University.  While this never was "the top," I was not reliant upon society to dictate my musical success.  I was creative, prosperous, successful, and scholarly, all because this is what I desired.  I created my own musical reality, and one can do this in an academic environment.  It is its purpose.  Academia is a nurturing hypothetical place in which to prepare for real life.  Many are privileged enough to stay there the entirety of their careers.  It is a prized and coveted job being a college teacher.  Many are not good teachers at all.  Then there is this thing called the "Professor Emeritus."  Recently when I out of curiosity looked at the music faculty roster at The University of South Carolina, the professors with whom I interacted while working on a Masters Degree in Jazz and Commercial music now were labeled "Professor Emeritus."  They are pretty old, old enough to have retired from an active teaching load, but they still retained their professorly-like status.  Each name clearly still was on the faculty roster, although no longer were they employed to teach a full course load.  It must be like heaven.  Teaching college really is like heaven, but Professor Emeritus?  Holy @#$% Batman!  Thus begins my nonexistent loathing of the inequality of academia, and the inequality of the American South.  With the emerging presidential race and and the colorful hopeful Republican candidates, and the newly emerging Confederate Predicament as a result of racial unrest in America, clearly it has revealed itself to me that a small clique of old money socialites control the South.  I do not fit in, because I am an artist.  No one seems to get what I do, and if they did it would not be politically correct to support it.  I have not made my presence known.  In other words I have not "come out."  I have not put on my ball gown and paraded in front of other cliquish old money socialites in attempt to sell myself.  I couldn't give a shit.  I pursue music, because it is the vocation I chose.  I trained.  I studied.  I produce, and why in Donald Trump's hair would my status in any way be governed by a small-minded clique of old school money?  It is.  Fully I believe that these people may be capable of understanding art, but that ability by the nature of the American South is subordinate to society.  Art exists only because of society.  Excuse me?  In the height of the Classical Era the nobility was prudent enough to recognize, understand, and appreciate art.  Hence Nikolaus l, Prince Esterhazy employed Papa Haydn.  Fayetteville has Dr. Menno Pennink.  I have on a very small scale pondered the idea of making my musical presence known to the retired Dr. Pennink.  I am a worthy jazz pianist, and I remember they mentioned an interest in jazz music at a Capitol Room concert.  What's the point?  I have no interest in society.  Always since college I have fancied gaining a professorship in a New England music school donning a Harris Tweed jacket and smoking a pipe.  Still the image is appealing to me, but you must make yourself known.  America is a very small place.  It is evidenced by the flounders who have risen from the bottom supporting a Confederate flag.  It is a predicament, one's national heritage versus civil equality.