Start With "Crazy"

The U.S. Of A resembles one giant dysfunctional family.  Those on the left regard their cousins on the right as malignant idiots.  Those on the right regard their cousins on the left as elitist saboteurs of democracy.  The squabbling is endless.  Tempers flare, voices are raised. Weapons are brandished and occasionally they are used to murder people. Before Donald Trump came to office this friction stayed mostly within a healthy parameter.  We were engaged in The Great American Debate regarding the nature and function of government.  Sadly, History has shown that we are capable of doing terrible violence to one another.  The extremist talk that's making its rounds scares the hell out of me.  When a spokesman for a powerful gun association accuses "Liberals" of brainwashing and manipulating high school students, I wonder if he actually believes what he is saying, or whether he is saying these things as part of a script.  Either way, such ideas reek of malice. I don't trust extremists on either end of the spectrum.  We're losing the moderate center, and we're losing it to those who have some concealed reason for inciting animosity between Americans. I don't know what a functional family looks like, but I imagine it's one in which members support one another with compassion and generosity.  This is not what today's America looks like.  Instead of mutual support  I see hostility, contempt and rancor. I see blame and a failure of individuals to critically examine their own thinking, just in case they might be wrong about some of their beliefs.

It is vital that we always hold up our beliefs to scrutiny.  We should examine our own minds and belief systems with great care.  People hold their opinions with tight death grips because they are frightened.  That fear generates bloodshed.

One of our greatest disasters is the connection between politics and money.  Only the rich can afford the towering cost of running campaigns.  Thus we are dominated by the agendas and tactics of the rich and powerful.  We ARE an  oligarchy.  We are actually something far worse, we are a Kakistocracy.  That's a newly popular word that originated in ancient Greece.  It means "government by the worst".  Every day we are regaled to a cast of venal operators whose appearance suggests that they are wearing horror movie clown faces.  If we need a reform urgently, before we reform gun laws, before we reform immigration policy, before we change ANYTHING, we need to reform campaign finance.  We need to bring a new method of choosing the people who make the laws by which we are governed. We need to get money out of politics.  I don't know how we'll achieve that.  The fox is already guarding the hen-house.  We need something akin to a revolution, one that is miraculously shorn of bloodshed.   

American culture is a multi-headed hydra.  It's brilliant and it's toxic. Over the decades, life has become more and more expensive in the U.S.A.  This "free" country charges an exorbitant price. The complex demands of a consumer society weigh heavily on its citizens.  Young people are especially vulnerable when they feel an avalanche of expectations laid upon them.  If they're to have a decent future, if they're to 'get ahead' they need to have stellar grades, be models of civic action, join clubs, demonstrate competence in multiple disciplines and volunteer to help the afflicted. It doesn't hurt if they're also athletic and good looking.  Who can fit into that template?  Who can get into an Ivy League school and graduate with an MBA and show the drive that's required in our heated business world?  What about the average kids?  It's said that everyone is good at something but the complexity of our culture is robbing ordinary people of a future  All the while a torrent of image and information comes pouring through the Internet, television, movies, radio, advertisements and smart phones.   This information chaos skews our perceptions and encourages depression and confusion.  Take a look at any waiting room or bus stop..  The people aren't talking to one another.  Their eyes are glued to the screens of their phones.  Americans may be the loneliest people in history. 

Recently a depressed and unstable eighteen year old murdered seventeen high school students with an AR-15 assault rifle.  Today  I heard the tape of a 9-1-1 call  made by this child about a year ago, just days after his mother died.  I felt such pity for him.  I couldn't help it!  I'm outraged at his evil, but I imagine that he felt abandoned and terrified.

In a nation of more than three hundred million people, there are millions who aren't being seen and cared for.  So many people fall through the cracks, yet we are armed to the teeth and waiting for some catastrophe so we can discern which are the good guys and which are the bad guys.  We are better than this.  Our president suggests that we give weapons to school teachers, that they may protect their students.  This epic dumb idea will create a new class of suicides.  We'll be adding Death By Teacher to the already climbing incidents of Suicide By Cop.  We aren't going to purge this nation of firearms.  Guns are deeply embedded in our national DNA.  There are immutable historical reasons for this situation.  Guns will always be a part of our cultural nervous system. 

It would be better to try to stop being crazy.  Because we are...crazy...we're bat-shit crazy.  Our minds can only cope with so much signal intensity before they start to smell like fried wiring inside the walls.  That's where I would start, anyway.  I would accept the fact that I am crazy, I'm disturbed and I need to look for someone who can help me. If I were to pin a diagnosis on Americans it would be that we suffer Bi-Polar Disorder wrapped up in a mantle of PTSD.

Maybe I'll call the Norwegians.  Or the Dutch.  

Baby Boomers and Self Hatred

          

      I've noticed that some (as they are called) Baby Boomers are like Jews who are anti-Semitic.  My mother was a classic Jewish anti-semite.  Hateful rhetoric dropped from her mouth like crap from an owl's cloaca.  "The Jews will trick you every time," she often said.  "You can't trust them."  Another of her favorites: "Money's what they're about.  Money money money.  Jews do one thing well, and that's make money.  It's a shonda that Hitler didn't succeed in wiping them out!"  The word "shonda" is Yiddish for "shame" or "too bad".

            As I got into my early teens I stopped being afraid of my mother.  I'd outgrown her.  She couldn't beat me up.  "Mom", I would riposte,  dodging her clumsy right hook and restraining my urge to retaliate with a knockout uppercut. "You're a Jew, I'm a Jew, dad's a Jew, Sandy's a Jew.  How can you say this horrible Nazi crap?"

            My mom was crazy.  I mean truly bat-shit crazy. Sometimes there’s “good crazy” but mom was “bad crazy”. Her mind ran like the railroad tracks that led to Auschwitz.  There were predictable stops at the same stations at the same times.  There were no deviations.  Is that one definition of crazy?  "An extreme rigidity of thought in which facts and nuances cannot be accommodated lest the pathological structure of said rigidity be broken like a bridge without proper support." 

            Let me get back to my original thesis, regarding Baby Boomers.  I'm seventy plus years old.  Demographically I'm a baby boomer.  In other cultures I would be a respected Elder but in Amerika I am seen by some as an irrelevant, un-hip old fart who still listens to Sixties pop music.  Let me correct this misapprehension.   I listened to (and still listen to ) John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and their ilk. I admit to being a huge musical snob. Keyboard monster Jessica Williams is the only living legend in my sandbox, and she refuses to be tied up by the label JAZZ.  I will also offer a place of honor to Leonard Cohen.  He has given me enormous pleasure with his music.

             I enjoyed post-1965 pop music. Within my vast stack of Coltrane and post-bop LPs were a limited number of pop records.  I bought the second Rolling Stones record.  I bought five Bob Dylan records, starting with Bringing It All Back Home and ending with Blonde on Blonde.  I hesitated at John Wesley Harding. I had to wait a few years for Dylan's Multiple Personality Disorder to roll over like slot machine fruit to a configuration I recognized. I never bought a Beatles record. I am a fan but I still don't buy their records.  Who needs to? 

            It's weird when I read articles in which Baby Boomers are generalized into a sociological cluster that resembles a haul of mackerel in a giant net.  Our nation has been dominated by some nebulous force called Youth Culture since we were Youth ourselves.  Now, if we don't understand or enjoy Hip Hop we're relegated to the Outer Limits of cultural discard.

 

            Some of the best music I hear is television background music.  These are theme songs, fragments or riffs designed to enhance the drama.  They are sound-memes, identifiers of hit series like Sons Of Anarchy (Review) or Breaking Bad. My ear tells me, "Hey, that's pretty good stuff..".  Fortunately one can buy a lot of these TV songs and themes. They are sold by the show and the season, not by the artist.  They're like playlists.  They ARE playlists.  The show's composer, such as Dave Porter from Breaking Bad, is not interested in tearing up hotel rooms and snorting coke with groupies.  

 

 

             The contemporary musical acts to which I am exposed are forgotten as soon I've heard them.  I give Lady Gag props for her science fiction wardrobe and catchy tunes.  But most of the singers or bands I hear get me to wondering.  Can they play at all?  Five years ago I would have thought so but lately there’s something stirring on the music scene and it’s Covid inoculated.  These musicians are awesome and they’re not touring.  They’re in the studio.

 

The dance shows knock me out. We love the dancing and choreography.  Love it!  I'm convinced that dance is in the midst of a golden revival, that we are witnessing the invention of truly new languages.   

When we see a band or a musical act, the odds are about fifty fifty.  They’re either phenomenal or phenomenally boring.

 

I have no refuge.  If I want to listen to jazz I'm welcome, of course.  But there is no more John Coltrane, no more Charles Mingus.  Now we have Marsalis Gumbo, that well known New Orleans dish. God bless the Marsalis clan as the best thing to happen to jazz.  It's good stuff,  it shows awesome technical prowess and a smidgen of soul.  It seems, however, that musical innovation is being led by technology.  One can buy a machine that makes sounds that might emanate from remote corners of the galaxy. It has no difficulty playing in 15/8 time.  We can write and play whatever we want!  Our imaginations have been unfettered.  Where are the people putting these awesome tools to use?  It turns out that the really good musicians, players who are imaginative AND proficient have migrated to the world of television and film, where they provide so many excellent sound tracks.  They're not interested in being pop stars.  They're interested in doing their work and making a decent wage. BTW, they're on Youtube, offering their teachings.
            There are no musical categories any more.  Jazz as a dynamic art form ran out of gas around 1970.  It had played itself into a corner called "New Wave" or "New Thing" and hardly anyone could tolerate the caterwauling that emerged from the saxophones of Albert Ayler or John Tchicai.  (A confession here: at the time, I loved New Wave.  I was taking acid).  Today, however, I find that Jazz hasn't disappeared at all.  It's grown and flourished!  Who wouldda thought?

            I'm not ashamed of being seventy plus years old.  The alternative is to be dead.

Anyone who has reached such an age has survived a given amount of horrible pain.

I'm proud to be a survivor.  I know certain things.  Pain is a great teacher. 

            My mother taught me by negative example not to feel contempt for my own tribe.  Her railroad tracks ran out in 1980, when she committed suicide.  She rolled up on the terminal station of her mental Auschwitz and it didn't look very inviting.  The sign said "Arbeit Macht Frei" and poor mom was in no condition to Arbeit.

            I know this isn't my best-written piece, I know it's sloppy and barely hangs together.  I'm trying to start a conversation.  I'm tired of being dismissed by little kiddies half my age who are now taste-makers, trend-setters and power brokers.  INFLUENCERS.

I'm in the business of making a living as a writer and I passed Rejection Slip #500 a long time ago for my novel, CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MANhttp://www.artrosch.com/2014/06/my-novel-vice-of-courage-chapter-one.html.  It's as profound and touching a story as any novel in print, it will make you laugh and make you cry but it has no vampires, nor anything with long teeth, it's just about people and the way they go about healing themselves from having crazy mothers.  Seventy pages of this book take place in 1982 Afghanistan!  It's exciting as  hell!

            Literary agents, editors,  publishers, taste-makers and other cultural filters and gate-keepers will some day be either seventy plus years old or six feet underground.

I invite them NOW, (before it's too late) to get on my train, whose tracks are constantly being built right under the engine and we never know where we might end up.

            (Today's magic word is "Duck on a string".  Okay, four words).