Just a Jealous Guy

We all miss John Lennon. He was a good person who tried hard to overcome his own flaws. He was at least honest about things, a rarity in this world. I particularly love the song "Jealous Guy" on the Imagine album. It always seemed to me to be an attempt to make up for "Run for Your Life" on Rubber Soul, a scary threatening piece about the same emotion. And you could always see that he truly loved Yoko Ono with a great love, an enduring love. I do think she mother'ed him too, and that he craved that from his childhood. I haven't much respect for Paul, though I think Paul has struggled to be a good person. I love Ringo for his ordinariness, salt of the earth qualities. And George at least tried to live a life devoted to the spirit and to truth. I find it weirdly ironic that George wrote one of the greatest love songs anyone ever wrote, "Something" (Abbey Road), for the woman he loved (Patti Boyd), and yet still lost her to another man who wrote another of the greatest love songs anyone ever wrote, "Layla". Crazy. The heart is where your world truly exists. Keeping it honest is difficult.

As for Bob, he played here last Friday. I didn't go, but I respect the fact that the man keeps on playing, and changing and trying to deal with the vast landscape of America like he does. I've seen Dylan four or five times along the way, including back in 1969, with the Band, singing Little Richard songs. And I still tend to get his new work, although the last couple of things other people bought them for me. I listen to Leonard Cohen more these days; he's closer in style to my own work. But I still play Dylan. I will always love Blonde on Blonde, with its songs about Edie Sedgwick and Joan Baez, and of course Sara Lowndes. I used to always play "Sooner or Later One of Us Must Know" when I set up the stereo for the first time in a new place. It was tradition, but these days I can hardly bear to listen to that song; it represents such loss and betrayal. My wife, Kimberly, bought me a gold disc copy of Blonde on Blonde when we were first dating. And I always think of Patti Smith's poem about Edie Sedgwick and Baby Brian Jones, the true heroes of Blonde on Blonde she calls them. Brian Jones you may recall is the member of the Rolling Stones that they kicked out in 1968 and who was found dead in his swimmming pool and everyone assumed it was drug overdose, but thirty years later a guy who had been working on the house confessed on his deathbed that he'd murdered Jones. Brian Jones was responsible for that frisson of true rebellion in the early Stones music. After he was gone they became the arena type band that they are still today. Not the same, but still great.

I used to know and write about rock and roll quite a bit. In the 1970s I wrote a column, Plasticware, for a local rag in Springfield, IL (The Phoenix). I got some freebie records out of that. I still have in the neighborhood of 500-600 pieces of vinyl. One of my old friends bought me a turntable that plugs into your computer and lets you make mp3s out of the vinyl cuts and I did that for awhile, but it takes a long time and you have to cut things up and label them. So I didn't keep at it.

Somewhere along the way I ended up getting into white female jazz vocalists from the 1950s. They tend to be sort of obscure now. The aficionados of the 60s and 70s kept and remembered the African American ladies, Ella Fitzgerald, Sara Vaughan, Billie Holiday. The caucasian singers people remember tend to be those associated with the film industry, Doris Day, and Peggy Lee. I found a number of less known but great singers that I then collected: June Christy (who was born in Springfield and who went to Chicago when she was 16 to sing in the big bands, wwii era), Anita O'day (who used the pig latin for "dough" for her last name), and Chris Connor. I also have several items from the outer fringes of rock and roll, particularly the project that Judy Henske and her husband Jerry Yester (who was with the Lovin' Spoonful and produced the Byrds) did, Farewell Aldebaran (look this one up on Wikipedia) on Zappa's Straight records. One of the greatest discs from the 1960s. Along with the LA group Love's Forever Changes, and Brian Wilson's teenage symphony to god, Smile. Just transcendent stuff.

I've also always loved the brit folk stuff, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Maddy Prior, Richard Thompson. I have played Steeleye since the 1970s and still do. Of course, more modern times include Loreena McKinnett and Enya and the Medieavel Baebes. I originally was deep into folk music at the beginning, Peter Paul and Mary and Joan Baez and Dylan and Phil Ochs. I was also always into show music, particularly Stephen Sondheim's stuff, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, West Side Story, Gypsy, Into the Woods, Company, Sweeney Todd, and especially Assassins. I love lots of other broadway stuff, also and have done several musicals in my life. I think Les Miserable may be the greatest. But I like Andrew Lloyd Webber's work, Evita, Phantom, and especially Sunset Boulevard. I like the film that that is based on very much, Bill Holden and Gloria Swanson, in a Billy Wilder piece.

There's a new book out about Dylan, Greil Marcus's collected pieces from the last forty years. I started reading Marcus in the late 1960s and have read him ever since. Good stuff. There are many Dylan books, including his own book which is very different than what people write about him. He's still an enigmatic figure. I think he has been seriously wounded in the heart, but mostly it is self inflicted. Men who are on the road have a difficult time remaining faithful. That's not an excuse, just a recognition of the biological drive. Anyway, Dylan is very romantic about women, typical for someone from a very patriarchal background. Me too, though I fight my inherent sexism. I was lucky enough in the 1960s to read several specific feminist tomes that have formed a basis for my thinking: Kate Millett's great study Against Our Will, Mary Daly's wonderful Gyn/Ecology, and of course Andrea Dworkin's Pornography. Also Robin Morgan's Sisterhood is Powerful. And at base, even before these books I read Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex, a remarkable book even today. I was looking at it last year again. I have a young friend (well, he turned forty so I guess he's not that young, but he started coming to my writing group when he was 18 and he is a lot like a young Truman Capote) who is hung up on the relationship between Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.

That was good stuff to go through in my callow youth. Not that I haven't seriously fucked up with the female side of the species along the way. I also have the roman catholic background and the essential misogyny of the culture itself. There's my tricky relationship with Margaret, and with my sisters. And then the spectrum of being that was my three marriages and the woman I lived with for 8 years, though she was married to my adviser. Not to mention the teenage girl in the 1970s. Many serious errors. I once contemplated writing a book that I was going to call "Sins Against Women", the premise being that I had committed most of them, once. That is, I tried to learn from my errors, but inevitably made new ones.

Well, I fully expect to face my errors when I come to the River in the afterlife. Whether it's facing that guy with the feather of truth, or seeing the movie of the really embarrassing parts of my life, I understand that I have an implicit need to see/hear/live the truth and that is the true nature of whatever one wants to call the afterlife, heaven, desire, hell, the akashic record. I struggle to deal with my own failings, but I celebrate the Lady and this world that is Her trousseau. May I just be of some service to Her, if only in recognizing Her great love and the mercy of the song.

Voting in Mississippi, Guns and Penis Extenders

Mississippi didn't ratify the 19th amendment, women's suffrage, until 1984. I wrote that to my cousin recently and she asked whether that meant women couldn't vote in that state until the 1980s. I wrote back to her:

"As for Mississippi, after an amendment is ratified by enough states it becomes the law of the land, even if some of the states hate it. The 19th amendment was ratified fairly quickly by enough states and became law, even though most of the southern states passed laws saying they would never accept it. Eventually of course they all ratified the amendment, but the very last to do so was Mississippi. I think the south has never really gotten over the blow to their machismo of losing to the north in the civil war. There are plenty of people there, still fighting that war because of their pride. Not unlike the way the Arabic cultures continue feuds over generations because of family honor. For the rest of us time passes and other things take our attention. It's amazing though, how prevalent through history this sort of long term pride thing is. I read Wikipedia entries all the time. The nature of my part time job is that I spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer waiting for the next task. So I read about history often. And it's mostly about people's money and people's pride. And their prejudices and attitudes color whoever they are seeking to overcome.

We all like to believe things that support our initial point of view. I think it is always a struggle to discern the lies you are telling yourself. The one good thing I got out of catholicism was the old examination of conscience thing. I don't see it in terms of sin, though. I see it entirely in terms of finding out the truth and trying to live with that truth, no matter how hard it is.

As for violence, we are all part of nature and it is violent at heart, but as a herd animal we know that organizing and following the herd and having some rules for getting along makes all our lives safe and better. So I'm in favor of that. I don't have a large problem with guns per se, but I do think they need some regulation. I worked for Sturm Ruger (gun company; I was a computer guy there) in New Hampshire once, and I have met a lot of real gun nuts along the way. I think guns are for American men representative of the same ability to control your existence that abortion and birth control are for women. As a matter of fact I think those two things will never be successfully restricted in this culture. They are too tied up with that weird American catchword: freedom. The freedom to do the stupid thing. I have had lots of fun bringing this argument up to the gun nuts and to the political feminists. They truly squirm. But I think it is actually true. These things are coming from deep inside. That said, I've never had a gun and have no desire for one. When I was young I did some firearms training stuff, but was not a big thrill for me.

Of course I don't want a motorcycle either. I think of motorcycles as "penis extenders" because I think a significant number of those people who ride them are desperate to be "men", in whatever fantasy version they have going on in their consciousness. But, I have my own areas of maleness that I have learned to cope with.

Of course I grew up with Wichita, Kansas, where men have been wearing guns in bars for the last nearly hundred and fifty years. Getting drunk and packing heat certainly strikes me as a bad combination. But, I don't go to bars anyway. I quit when I quit smoking in the 1980s. Now, of course, you're not allowed to smoke in the bars, but those days are forever in my past.

Mid-Term Speculation; Vote Dem Anyway

This is my 900th post on this blog. It started out as mainly politics, but then migrated to my life in general (thanks Andrew Sullivan for demonstrating that consciousness extends across many worlds). Finally a couple of years ago, my brother-in-law complained that I posted pictures of his children and that it wasn't safe. So I took my personal life stuff and moved it to an email blog that I send out maybe as often as once a week.

The irony is that now my brother-in-law is on Facebook and posts pictures of his children all the time. But, that's my life. Somebody is always telling me I'm wrong about something and five years later I discover they are doing it themselves.

Me, I'm a classic liberal, I try and fix things, fix myself. I have come to believe this is what Barack Obama is all about. He keeps trying to fix things. And of course things keep changing on him, or at least the way they are protrayed changes them. So in the consciousness of the volk he has never quite fixed anything. When the reality is that without Obama, and without the frantic work to save the economy, we would all be in the royal dumper right now. Plus, if McCaine had won, there'd be quite a significant war going on in Afghanistan. Wait, there is a war in Afghanistan.

I guess we will never know. But I do think that McCain might've gone along with Israeli plans to bomb Iran. And that would inevitably lead to a very interesting semi-world war. Not to mention a more probable police state in this geography.

So, my point is simple: The republicans are going to do what they can to get control back in DC next month. I don't think they will take the senate back, but the House is another question. In any case, they don't actually have any programs, or plans, whatsoever, except cut taxes and increase the deficit.

They will do their level best to make Obama look like the author of the nightmare they will produce for us. Mainly so they can beat him in 2012, and get back all the really plum payoff monies that they had under George W. It is so very clear that John Roberts was put on the Supreme Court to engineer the re-introduction of serious money into the electoral process, and that now the payoffs for the Republicans are going to be bigger and bigger from now on. Until the collapse of the civilization, of course.

The end times vision here is easy: rich people are incredibly stupid and always create the situation that destroys the culture. Marx wasn't right about much, but he did note that the more you starve the great mass of people, the higher the probability of social chaos. He thought it would lead somewhere, but of course, it just leads to barbarism and then another powerful cadre gets control and uses violence to keep its power.

Look for a much more empowered FBI and CIA, in the coming republican hegemony. I guess the real questin is this: If Obama is re-elected in 2012, will the military stage a republica themed coup d'etat? I think there is a medium good chance of this.

My other speculation about the body politic is this: If you make Obama into a failed presidency, why wouldn't you expect the african-american population to hold that against you forever and use it as the basis of true resistance? There are a lot more guns in the black community than there are among the white folks, no matter what the NRA says. And they have some ideas about how to use them.

But, vote democratic anyway. It's the right thing to do. Even if your candidate is a goofy twit like Alexi Giannnoulias. Even if he's a puddle jumper playing the middle like that famous Mormon boy, Harry Reid. Even if you know they opposed the health care reform act.

And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. Thanks John, we miss you.

Sharks of Desire

We approach the mid-term elections and the news for those who would like to see reality is bad. We can see that the Chamber of Commerce is injecting literally millions of dollars into the elections to defeat Democrats. Never mind that this will put in place a republican government that will destroy what is left of the consumer base that commerce requires to continue growing. This is a classic example of the american ability to not think beyond the next profit statement.

As the republicans come back to power and destroy millions of more jobs and people's ability to pay for and buy things, what will the Chamber of Commerce do about it? They will urge us all to give more money to those who start and run businesses, with no thought that there won't be customers.

And the american voter will go along with this, splitting the culture into two parts, one tiny, those rich enough to have a middle class or better life, and one enormous, those of us unable to afford those things we could ten years ago.

The credit card companies will tie ever greater segments of the population to enormous debt that can't be paid off in their lifetimes. And then, as large population segments pass away in ten to thirty years and their estates can't cover their debt, then there will be further crisis in the banking industry. But by then there will be no way to support the banks. It will be untenable.

And about then the US Army and Air Force will be taken over by the xtian generals who already chomp at the bit to administer their version of a religious democracy, enforced by the power of the troops. Could it happen? Will it happen? Is it inevitable?

The problem is, when a people as a whole dismiss hard evidence, then the illusion as a whole is bound to founder. But, like in North Korea, as long as you have a large standing army that you can make enforce your weird version of reality, than things can limp along for decades. Of course, millions of your people starve, and millions more die with no healthcare and no retirement.

And this looks very much like what the republicans and the Chamber of Commerce are interested in creating.

I have long thought that rich people, who already have way more than they need or could ever spend, have a psychological desire to make the distance from the rest of us as great as possible, because it is the only way their egos can keep going. They are like the sharks of desire in the great waters of human life.

The Lady awaits them when they cross over, with truth, and of course, with justice.