Doctor, doctor help me please!!!

I am a lifelong fan of loud, passionate and unbridled rock and roll (if you are surprised by this – we have never met). The spirit of this music flows through me like oxygen – I have even been called a bit of a rock snob to boot. As I was driving home with the wife and youngest from the park the other night – Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” came onto the radio. It immediately struck me how long it had been since I had heard this song. This was a stark contrast to the ubiquity of this song on classic rock radio from my earlier years.

As the song played (I subtly edged up the volume – met with a complete absence of protest), Oscar -my eleven year old- says from the back seat, “I thought that this song was faster.” It occurred to me – somehow miraculous that he had escaped the irresistible temptation to listen to this song over and over the first time he heard it – that I remember so clearly from my own first encounter with this monolith. “Just wait” I responded, and edged up the volume a little more.

The song took over the mood of the car and its wonderful accelerating pace and volume enveloped our imagination and the mood of the moment. The song was wistful and mystical, transcendent and passionate – and the all too familiar path from placid calm to swirling tempest that characterizes this beauty transfixed our ride home. It was perfect. It was rock and roll. It reminded me of why I love that music so much and reminded me of simpler times – when I was not so predisposed to bury my own head in the more complex world of grown up issues and actions. The juxtaposition was captivating. I wondered if this juxtaposition provided any opportunity to reconcile the weird and sometimes deflating character of some of the things happening in our common culture today. I wondered if I might try...

:)

So here...with a little help from the Greatest Rock and Roll Band of all time...and utilizing the lyrics from what is arguably the greatest rock and roll song of all time (at least the second greatest in my book) is my attempt to soothe my own soul spreading the healing power of rock and roll over the fractures and contusions of some of our clumsy and bruising public discourse.

SATISFACTION– by the Rolling Stones
(as playfully amended...it helps if you actually hear the song in your head)

(transcendent opening guitar lick here....)

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress." ~John Adams

When I'm drivin' in my car
And that man comes on the radio
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can't get no, oh no no no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say

"As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use. A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices." ~William James

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between" ~Oscar Wilde

When I'm watchin' my TV
And that man comes on to tell me
How white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me
I can't get no, oh no no no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else.” ~Winston churchill

I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no girl reaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones." ~John Maynard Keynes

When I'm ridin' round the world
And I'm doin' this and I'm signing that
And I'm tryin' to make some girl
Who tells me baby better come back later next week
'Cause you see I'm on losing streak
I can't get no, oh no no no
Hey hey hey, that's what I say

"YOU LIE!" ~Congressman Joe Wilson (R- SC)

I can't get no,
I can't get no
I can't get no satisfaction
No satisfaction,
no satisfaction,
no satisfaction

"Well, I learned a lot. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries." ~Ronald Reagan talking to reporters upon his return from Latin America. 12/4/1982

...song fades...

An Exercise in Futili-TEA

If I didn’t love this place and the ideals that I hold dear so much I might just think that what was happening with the political right in the United States was the most beautifully absurd political theatre I had ever seen. It is becoming more and more painful to hear how earnest so many of them are in their hope that what they are calling “Tea Parties” will actually result in anything other than the status quo from a right wing political establishment that is just shy of eating its young to survive. It makes it harder and harder for me to listen to and watch these media vultures perpetrate what seems more and more clearly will be a tragic and shameless exploitation of faith.

If I didn’t care – I might just sit back and watch things happen, but the fact is....I do care. I care about political ideals and a healthy marketplace of ideas. I care about a balance of power and I care about a path with a profound sense of bitterness at the end of the road and it turns my stomach to watch people be lied to and to watch people be used.

So here…addressed to my rank and file adversaries on the right – are my concerns for your political future. You are being swindled! You are being lied to! You are being exploited! And those that are doing this have done it to you before and will continue doing this as long as you let them. I am talking about FOX news, I am talking about Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck and…. – and any actual Republican elected official who has the brass juevos to show up at any of your Tea Parties. They will even trot a few pop media whores across the stage to hock their latest wares. Remember when you see them that these geniuses are the EXACT bunch whose strategic wisdom has painted you into a desperate corner in a cold room. Do you need a revolution? Absolutely! But what you need most is a revolution of leadership, ideas and strategies in your own party – or a new party all together.

These shameless weasels are doing their very best to cozy up to the organizers of your Tea-parties to co-opt your outrage and energy and turn it into fundraisers and campaign designs for their own benefit. They WILL be asking you for your money AND your time! They WILL say that you must not advocate an actual revolution; they WILL say that the Republican party needs a major overhaul and just look over there at the ones that need to be exiled! They WILL say that they feel JUST AS ANGRY AS YOU ARE. But they don’t mean a word of it. They are leeches and the blood they are sucking is your credibility.

On Thursday morning, when you have watched yourself on the news and you are settling into the understanding that what I have said is true, there is gonna be a nasty, dirty taste in your mouth and you will feel every bit as used as that lonely character you’ve seen in the romantic tragedies time after time who finally thought that it was true love and finally gave into the pressure and the urges…but ultimately woke up all alone again…and now for the last time!

(Epic and bloody crime spree to follow)…

Thunder in the Distance (spastic sputtering from the right)

The first time you inhale the stench of death it changes you. There is a profanity to that experience that transcends singular sensory perception. As an odor the reaction pulls at your lungs in a way that tugs the other organs convulsively along and leaves you with an earned understanding of foulness that you will forever recognize at the slightest whiff. It is odor beyond odor that wrecks your emotion with primal instinct. This stench is in the air.

Of late – this nastiness seems to be slathered about any and all right wing sycophantic talking heads like they are bathing in vats of it as cologne. This can’t be good. The fervor seems to be moving towards manic and their eyes are darting back and forth like rats in boiling fishbowls, but with less natural grace. I don’t need to name names here because you instinctively know the ones I am talking about. They are a shameless breed of opportunistic hucksters who have built an industry on the mystic art of stirring up and identifying with the discontent in a population that is seething but does not know why and is starved for validation.

The bureaucratic imperative is a simple law that says that the first rule of any bureaucracy is to survive; to perpetuate its own necessity. So then it is the first rule of our modern breed of political hack to perpetuate their own relevance. They have made their way for years with shrill, mean spirited and over simplistic pandering to the basest instincts of an audience in whom they have worked with singular focus to fan embers of bitterness into flames of inchoate rage and who are shamefully quick to jump onto the simplest, most convenient and least personally accountable answers. An ever growing sense of alienation is a hallmark of job security for them – and therefore must be nourished carefully and attentively. They depend on these masses for meaning and have come to a space in a place where oxygen is scarce and a foaming fervor is their last desperate lifeline.

Their time has passed but they will rage against the dying of their dingy yellow spotlight like werewolf Quixotes on a mutated caffeine strain. The show promises to be dangerous and is moving like a hammer-throw windup through an antique shop. My advice is don’t stand too close and cover your tender parts in protective clothing. The death rattle here will be kaleidoscopically messy and projectile in nature. They will grasp desperately with piercing volume at the lowest hanging fruit no matter how rotten or festering the logic is. The newest version of the red scare is well underway and if the early returns are any indication it promises to make McCarthy seem cautious, measured and reasonable by comparison. They will promise doom and disease, they will diagnose certain death and absolute Armageddon with a tin hollow booming conviction whose volume belies its own credibility.

Listen to these desperate, anachronistic brutes at your own risk. This is a stench that rubs off on you and seeps in to the marrow and I would think twice before letting these sickly wounded screeching vultures start to let that foulness loose in my dreams.

The Province of Night

Something about the dark of night matches my character in ways that I cannot fully understand. It is not sinister, but is not innocent. There is something viscous and slightly more delicious about the way that thoughts move through the air and isolation in the dark of night. Movement is elegant and thick reminiscent of bubbles rising through shampoo bottles as they turn, only the shampoo is all around and the bubbles are everything that moves or changes.

I remember watching “Little Miss Sunshine” for the first time as the characters retreat to their first night in their respective motel rooms and slip comfortably into their anonymous and most comfortable vices (addiction, despair, optimism, ambition, isolation…) - something about that scene spoke to me deeply. Night is retreat to that which stabilizes our least self conscious sense of who we are. We are absent the distraction afforded by being able to see the world around us and the sphere of our perceptual experience becomes concomitantly smaller affording focus to naturally turn inward.

Have you ever noticed that the best conversations you have ever had are nestled deeply in the stillest part of the night. It is then and only then that the absence of external stimuli meet the sleep deprivation induced abandonment of social convention and quite naturally provide for something approximating real communication; a communication of thoughts and ideas absent of the otherwise omnipresent bias of self consciousness. It is a perfect storm of communication potential.

The dark of the night recalls demons for some. They are in the closet and under the bed. They are stuffed resoundingly in the dusky compartments in our own head. They roam the streets and forests with weapons untold and bursting with violent and vicious capacity. This is where the wild things are. The werewolf of legend is recalled from his beastly slumber within the confines of his human prison at the primal wash of the light of the full moon. Perhaps even the most sinister of all fantastic characters – the vampire can only come out at night to engage in his carnivorous endeavor and shrinks from the light as his mortal foil.

What subconscious monster lurking within causes us such primal terror? The fantasy of consuming flesh is not so intangible for anyone who has ever really made love with abandon – even taking nourishment from the very lifeblood of our objects of adoration. Flesh is both beautiful and delicious. Have you ever watched a nursing child? The connection between mother and baby as the fleshy cheek and lips meet fleshy breast and nipple is singular in nature as the purest demonstration of sustenance. It is not strictly vampiric but it is about as close as can be righteously imagined. Watching mother and child is beauty at fullest blossom – but it somehow is the stuff that terror is made of.

This is the province of night. When that which is most beautiful of all is deeply terrifying; when we can abandon the limits of the oneness of ourselves for the universally accessible holism of selflessness; when our most comforting vices connect us not to only to individual tragedy but to the tragedy implicit in all of humanity; when agape love connects us all like warm shampoo moving as the earth moves in its timeworn orbit; and when discovery of oneness and newness and humanity is a nourishing revelation each and every night.

As the stars shine to us from millennia long since passed – teasing from the infinite.

The King of Kong - Defender Memories and Brent Sanchez

If you have read my blog you may remember me waxing philosophic about the video game Defender from the eighties and my tragically flawed best friend from Junior High. His name was Brent Sanchez and he was a twisted piece of work - but my brother in arms and hopeless fellow rock and roll junkie and girl watcher for 7th and 8th grades.

This weekend I got to indulge myself a bit and rent a few indie DVD's. One of these was King of Kong - an interesting, hilarious, puzzling and insightful documentary centering on the world record high score for the classic video game "Donkey Kong." I highly recommend that you see it - whomever you may be and THANK YOU for recommending it to me, Dan.

If you have no interest in the classic games this movie may lose you, but for me just seeing those massive free standing consoles with the joysticks and the multi-purpose concave buttons brings back a mad rush of memories. I watched this movie gleefully in a cocoon of warm nostalgia. Perhaps the movie's most interesting (and personal) turn for me actually occurred long after the DVD ended. When I got curious today and visited the twingalaxies web site (the official record keeper for classic video game world records) to see what the high score for Defender might be. The world record high score for Defender is somewhere in the 250,000 range.

Brent Sanchez was robbed! In the movie they went to careful length to explain what happens in these classic video games on what is called, the "Kill Screen". This is when the game essentially runs out of new challenges for you and cannot continue. You have beaten it, and what happens on this final screen in some of these games is that the game essentially displays a partial screen and partial gibberish because it has run out of code.

Defender, however, does not. Defender, the classic Williams arcade game, just turns over and starts again once you reach a million points. That's right...I know what happens on Defender when a player reaches a million points. Do you know how I know this? Because I have fucking seen it! Brent Sanchez used to do this instead of (perhaps even in PLACE of) talking to his mother and father and/or relating to anyone in his family. He was something of an asshole savant in real life - but a Zen master at this damn game. Brent, if you are out there...a terrible injustice is being perpetrated and your place in history calls for you to claim it. I am here and ready to cheer you on. Hell - I used to feel like a toad for only being able to get to 200,000 and it isn't that far from the world record. Is someone selling this game in the classic arcade console - with a little practice maybe I can avenge the injustice done to Brent by the cruel march of pop culture and his own tragically self destructive tendencies.

Immortality awaits...

Nevermind and Defender Changed my life (originally published on CNN's ireport 12/12/2008)

As we drove in the car on a recent trip I got to listen to whatever I wanted to on my iPod. "Sign of the Gypsy Queen" by April Wine began to play. It is a fantastic song that I was pleased to re-discover on iTunes. It is like a little time capsule from 1981. As the song played and the family slept in the car (hence my complete freedom for musical choice) I began to reminisce about that time.

In 1981 I was thirteen years old and my whole life was rock and roll, the fledgling MTV (where I was introduced to April Wine), my best friend and a fantastic and exciting new video game called Defender. He was from a broken home and had a history of abuse (Let me clip Your dirty wings). He had a reckless and unique sense of humor, a megalomaniacal personality and what I would later discover was a very addictive and self destructive side. We had no idea back then that we were the fledgling grunge generation or that we were enmeshed in helping to create the cultural landing strip for Nirvana's revolutionary impact.

He was fantastic at Defender. He was always better than me. He would steal money and spend hours at whatever arcade was open and play and play and play. I did not know then that he was seeking escape. It was fun to watch him play. I never got past the fifth level. He eventually discovered what happened when you reached a million points. The game just started over. His fingers were amazing when he played. His thumb slapped the reverse button spastically and his right hand melded with the joystick. Firing was a constant stream, but even I could do that. His magic was the placement of the ship and thrusting exactly right (I'm worse at what I do best, And for this gift I feel blessed).

This level of dedication was tragically misplaced and profound. The color scheme of the game was beautiful and even now if I could use this scheme to decorate my house I probably would. The colors were only dark and it was all set against a black screen. The colors were meant to make you feel like you were deep in another world where light was not plentiful. Even in the arcades it was always dark (With the lights out it's less dangerous). Sometimes April Wine even played in the background. He would get kicked out of school a few years later for doing lines of cocaine off of the Biology class room tables. We had grown apart as his behavior became more risky and blatantly hostile (Load up on guns and Bring your friends).

He would reappear in my life about ten years later as I was a college student in family housing in Seattle. It was grunge central and I was deep into the Sub Pop scene. He was looking for a place to stay after some or another part of his life had fallen apart. The soundtrack had changed profoundly.

Over this trip last Xmas I also got to listen to Nirvana and even received a Kurt Cobain figure from my sister as a Christmas gift. I still love Nirvana. They feel like home in a lot of ways. It occurred to me as I listened to Nevermind while doing the dishes that they probably played Defender as adolescents just like I did and I wondered what effect that color scheme had on them (I'm so ugly, But that's ok, 'cause so are you.)

The fundamental power of Nirvana is the bleak and explosive contrast that they create. They do not shy away from paradox of crushing and even violent volume with bubble gum melody but revel in it. I heard some narration from a history of rock and roll piece explain recently that Kurt had wanted to mix Black Sabbath and the Beatles. That seems to make some sense, but it does not capture all of it. If you listen to the music you can hear that the paradox is not only sonic, it is emotional and philosophical (I'm lucky to have met you I don't care what you think unless It is about me It is now my duty to completely drain you.)

That violent dissonant feedback and the fuzzbox screaming vocals are primal and they are dancing along the edge of something that seems apocalyptic in scope. I don't know exactly what the connection is between April Wine, my best friend from 7th grade, Nirvana and Defender but I know it is there and it means something. I think that the color scheme must matter a lot but I am not sure how and I wish that I could remember exactly how the sounds of the game used to make me feel.

MTV Get Off the Air (Dead Kennedys circa 1982) - written 8/11/2008

I spent yesterday with my teanaged daughter serving as bodyguard/chaperone to her and two of her friends at the Vans Warped tour. Quite a feat really, but she was thrilled when she saw that it was coming and that some of her favorite bands woud be so close to home. She saved up and even paid for gas to get there. The overall lineup was what you might expect...that is; full of bands I never heard of. Save one. I was amazed when I read the concert lineup and saw that the Vandals were scheduled to play. That's right. The Hungtington Beach, California; formed in 1980; second band signed to Epitaph records Vandals. A genuine Punk band.

I know....it's not exactly 1980 and punk doesn't mean now what it did then, and there have been some band member changes...but still! I was there for my daughter and her friends, but I was determined to see these dudes play. They did not disappoint. Two minute blasts of classic sonic retreads...and even my daughter loved them (although her lame friends were busy wandering aimlessly...more on that later). They were clearly dudes in mid-life but they brought the noise. They played a healthy bunch of their own classics and even threw in a Ramones cover (Sheena is a Punk Rocker) and closed with a showy Queen tune (Don't Stop Me Now).

My daughter had a couple of bands on her mind (The Academy Is...Cobra Starship). I was impressed with her taste. Of all the bands on this crazylong bill. These were clearly the best of the rest and duly reinforced my pride in my little girls rocker cred. What was interesting was learning how the other girls that came with us were not really quite her "homies". As the day went on I became more and more aware of this and prouder and prouder of her. It is a bit of a shame really to go to a show like this and see the state of American "girlhood" - at least for some. It looks like quite a minefield out there and these two tagalongs have definitely stepped in something. It was very satisfying to watch my girl outclass these little lost girls without even meaning to - but a little sad too.

In any case...it was an adventure and an experience. Another interesting phenomenon was a band that the tagalong girls were totally hyped to see. They are called 3oh!3 and they seem to be essentially two white guys from Colorado rapping their best "street cred" rhymes about nothing in particular over some trendy "housified" beats. They were on one of the smaller stages but they were met by one of the clearly most enthusiastic receptions of all the performers. The whole crowd seemed to know a little hand symbol for the "band" and welcomed them warmly. I did not know what to make of any of this since their music sounded to me essentially like a hair product commercial with the word ass thrown in for good measure. It was truly mystifying and reinforced my disappointment at our tagalong kiddies. I guess the moral of that part of the story is:

"You can never underestimate the taste of the American Youth Market"
or maybe it's: "Rock and Roll is really REALLY Dead"
oe maybe it's: "It's a white horny, desperate to be hip, teenage thing, you wouldn't understand."
or maybe it's: "If it's too loud, you're too old".

But really...who gives a fuck? There was some good music and some shitty music and my little girl has genuine rocker understanding and a very firm grasp of what it means to be a young woman who respects herself for herself. Punk rock or not...shit like that makes a daddy proud!

PS...Right after the Vandals a grizzled looking band took the stage called GBH (I had never heard of them). When they came on loud and fast they caught my attention. They looked like thirty year veterans - grey hair and spiked leather. I was totally ignorant of them - but they are even older than the Vandals - hailing from England and formed in 1978. They rocked and another discovery was the Aggrolites - not quite as old (formed in 2002) but they seem to understand real ska-punk and thumped out a nice groove.

How Deep the Rot? (Presidential Politics 10-2008) - written 9/28/2008

Bone chillingly surreal! That's all I can say; I have been eagerly and foolishly anticipating the first presidential debate on Friday - now that it's gone I cannot say that I am satisfied. Of course, since I am not a complete moron my vote is meant for Obama - but I can't help but feel slightly sickened at the overall political view at this point.


I remember when I was a kid walking up to one of those old abandoned dark brown wood barns that litter the landscape here in lonely corners of the northwest. Something about those always looks very warm and, even though they stand as quasi-monuments to the hopelessness of permanence, they seem comforting. Their deep brown reminded me of the fur color from some of my favorite stuffed animals so reaching out to touch the wood held rich promise. As you probably know - this wood in these structures is generally not too healthy. Feeling that wood for the first time was confusing; it was wood, but it was not strong. It was brittle and crumbly. The wood was rotted from the inside - it had been built before the tools for millenial lifespans were in view. Even my little boy hands could pull apart this wood. These structures look solid from afar, but when tested the rot becomes apparent; quickly and shockingly.


As I watch more and more of our political process unfold this is the image that comes to mind. If I were to squeeze too hard at one of the supporting beams here I can very easily imagine it crumbling in my hand. It is fascinating that we are in the midst of a fundamental systemic crisis; a realignment which challenges the basic philosophy of our economic system and NO ONE is questioning whether capitalism is fundamentally flawed. Truly - our political leaders are only interested in how their sound bites play to voters, not whether or not thier ideas are connected to anything worth saving.


This rot is very deep. Sarah Palin is a wildly cynical reflection of how little respect John McCain and the Republican machine has for the principle that political leaders should be qualified to do anything other than be able to be able to talk mostly in full sentences and drape themselves in business clothing that matches the models hocking office furniture. The Republican machine is breaking new ground in our race to the bottom - but they are not to blame. They would not do this if it was not a true and tested means to the end they seek.


My support of Obama is still based on the hope that he really represents a possibilty that a relatively new but hopeful political outsider with real experience as a member a minority group in the United States could challenge the party machines at the 'systems' level. As the campaign goes on I have begun to believe this less and less. The Republicans party in this election is not worth serious consideration. Essentially a vote for that ticket is a vote in favor of a kind of shallow mean spirited empty hopelesseness that is a vote in favor of the characterization of the american voter AS a shallow mean spirited and hopeless reptile of consumption.


I want to be very careful here not to be misunderstood by my language. I do not mean to belittle ANYONE by calling them names. This is really how things look to me. I am sure that the folks that support McCain and Palin love their kids just like I love mine - and that they are fundamentlally sweet folks who hope the best for strangers just like I do.


I am not really a Democrat; but my politics are definitely liberal. I am mostly communitariam minded, but I have voted non-democrat in my life - I was even part of the Ralph Nader problem. This time around, however, if the Republican party wins the presidency in this election I cannot see how any serious thinker would interpret it as anything more than a surreal surrender of the American revolutionary spirit to the empty shapeless mass of technocratic, demographic-dissecting, modern vacuousness of suburban philisophical hopelessness and isolation.


This rot seems deep to me - but we are facing a real question here. Is this system with both of these parties worth anything more than the brightly painted clamshell airsealed packaging that the Republicans have stocked on the shelves; and what does it mean about us if we purchase what they are selling, open that package and do not notice that what we smell is rotten through and through?

The Morning After (A Reminiscence in Reverse - originally published on 10/21/2008)

It is the morning of November 5th. Early. I could not sleep last night watching the late late late night talking heads going over how and why exactly the Republicans and the McCain campaign have imploded quite so dramatically and completely and reviewing the hisorical impact of the Obama election ad nauseum.

There is a profound satisfaction to watching the light come up on the first day after the first Black President has been elected in the United States. Watching television does not do this feeling justice. This is a national holiday of a new sort. This is a national day of genuine triumph - this is not the typical holiday in which the calendar simply by its inevitable progress presents a day in which we look to the past or routinely and passively pay homage to our family and its traditions. Today is a day of an earned celebration. It is a hard fought rite of passage with shameful years of torturous suffering and injustice and the tumultuous violent swings of a hard fought labor to give birth only to an era of uneasy balance between legislative gains and cultural defiance with the slightly transparent character of seething resentment (from many sides.)
Today is a day fueled by the deep satisfaction of recognizing that the light of Dr. King's vision has broken over the mountain top and is plainly and clearly in sight. The light from this change feels like a warm glow beginning to heat the earth after a long and cold dark night, but it is from within. Today is a day that we have all earned, regardless of party affiliation or political ideology.

I could not have anticipated how deep this feeling would feel. The satisfaction feels like it is in my bones and I cannot stop smiling at the sky. My eyes are tearing up because the world is definitely different and definitely better than it was yesterday - and than it has ever been in my lifetime. Today is testimony to the breath of life in Dr. Kings dream and to the aspiring dream of America of our founding fathers and their mothers. Things will never be quite the same again. The sky is alive with light and the air all around is a blank canvas of possibility. Today it means something different than it ever has before to be an American and I am happy with every fiber to be a part of it.

Now...obviously...this has not really happened yet. I am just excited (to say the least) at the possibility and I hope you are too. I could not resist the temptation to begin to contextualize what I hope to be feeling very soon now. Please get out and vote and feel free to send this or your own message about how you will greet the first day after a Black President is elected in the United States to others as inspiration.

The End of Time (written 12/31/2008)

The last day of 2008 is slipping away like the lingering flaver of the last sip of a pitcher of beer that I had never tasted before but found both flavorful and invigorating. I do like to savor a nice brew.

Time was that KISW radion station in Seattle (used to be REAL RAWK! {aggressive growl} but now is probably Classic Rock {breathy quieter growl}) would always close out the calendar year with a survey of the greatest 1000 rock and roll songs of all time. It always used to end with Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven at number one. When I was a kid listening to this list always excited me and I was unfailingly thrilled to be in air-range of KISW to hear any part of this list as it played.

I would anticipate the next song and swell with satisfaction at my predictive hits and near misses. This kind of ritual - the recounting of exactly where things belong has seemed to mark the culture of mass media throughout my consumptive lifetime. The week between Christmas and New Year is a kind of inventory exercise land fit only for compiling self-reflective lists of what was either ubiquitous in the ending year or what may have been genuinely interesting. This ritual has become comfortable for me - maybe it's my Catholic background which has helped make ritual (in general) so comfortable, or maybe it's just the comfort of anonymity in not bothering to go against the "let's review" grain.

What then was 2008? What was beautiful and inspiring? What remains? What was horrific and terrifying? What mattered? Does anyone care?

For me 2008(my own personal inventory) was a year of:
Children and Family, Friends and Gatherings, Beauty and Awe, Laughter and Smiles, Love and Loss, Passion and Warmth, Challenge and Change, Confusion and Despair, Joy and Connection, Playfulness and Maturity, Loneliness and Inspiration, Silliness (Salinas?) and Profundity, Planning and Discussing, Struggle and Resistance, Hope and Change, Drinking and Singing, Excitement and Reflection, Realization and Acceptance, Growth and Regression, Music and Games, Worry and Frustration, Warm Cuddling, Awkward Tension, Doubt, Knowing Smiles, Displaced Confrontation, Reassuring Eye Contact, Suspicious tones, Trusting words,

Transition...and the never ending search for redemption.

Finding what was lost and savoring what was good.

Some of my own personal inventory is really just a playlist of greatest hits that will probably be there from year to year, but the interesting stuff may be the new bits. I don't know where or how all of this fits in the greatest rockers of all time. My suspicion is that Stairway to Heaven is safe at number one -- but I have to say I was thrilled when I heard Nirvana make the list for the first time. It looks like lately the Grunge messiahs even made it as high as number three last year...and that is what really keeps things interesting.

Thank you to the Universe and the wonderful people in my life for both the real RAWK and for keeping it interesting. I am neck deep in life's river but I am not alone and in the words of the great Zen proverb:

"After enlightenment, the laundry"

Project Runway Redux (written 1/2/2008)

Why exactly does one start writing? Most of what I do is really a stream of consciousness type thing with some loose editing thrown in for balance. I guess the fundamental question is – what do I want to communicate? Is there a story I want to tell? Is there some lesson I want to impart? Am I trying to make a reader laugh? Am I trying to entertain myself? At this point – it is too early to tell for this piece. The truth is…for myself…I seek transcendence. I want to fly. I am interested in the power to be able to look to the heavens and ascend, looking down as I propel myself forwards and backwards and in any direction I so choose with only the power of my mind. This may be unrealistic. Nonetheless I will keep going and see where it gets me.

The authors that I love the best always seem to be people whose writing is a mix between the voice of someone whose ideas I am stimulated by because of their originality or insightfulness and those people that are so starkly brilliant that it takes several passes to understand what I have read. I don't know if it makes any sense to emulate these voices. Somehow I envision these kinds of people as the ones at parties who can be the center of any conversation just by the force of their intellect, ideas or observations. For me social interaction is somewhere between awkward and excruciating. At parties I am the one most likely to have a whole conversation with something stuck in my teeth or my fly down halfway. That captures attention but in other ways.

Artistic endeavor seems most true to me as an almost biological compulsion. I am a general fan of philosophy and have been since a teen. It was then that my enveloping passion for rock and roll (specifically very loud rock and roll) began to make me wonder whether it made much sense to be so interested in something like very loud rock and roll. Seeking answers I turned to Aristotle's Poetics for insights into what the meaning and purpose of art means to our existence in a philosophical sense. This may have been overkill for an obsession with the Scorpions and Mötley Crüe but it made sense to me back then. Aristotle to the mind of a fifteen year old Chicano male may indeed be very different to the mind of said same Chicano male at forty years of age – but the conclusions of the former have certainly shaped the perspective of the latter.

I think that I still see things roughly the same as then – that we seek to produce art in any form for some basic need to express ourselves; to take what is within us and bring it outside of us. What happens then is really up to the universe. In some cases we may toil in obscurity making our paper maché replicas of first generation Star Wars action figures or we may be swept up by the random finger of fortune and consumed ad-nauseum by forces far beyond our own control. To me, however, it still comes back to the artist as a singular producer birthing those ideas, feelings, lessons or the primal need to make some monument to the infinite that characterizes the artistic endeavor. This is my basic problem with "Project Runway".

What the hell does this beast mean? In my home I have a teenage daughter who is seemingly obsessed with this program. Can this be good? Is this art? Is it art about aspiring artists? Would Picasso or Wagner have participated in such an endeavor? Would Nikki Sixx? Sometimes it is mesmerizing to me when she watches – it depicts a world that is completely foreign to me. As an obviously overweight middle aged Chicano who would wear shorts, tee-shirts and athletic shoes every day of every year if social convention allowed; perhaps this sort of product is not being marketed directly to me. Nevertheless it is a visible component of my universe and its existence and consumption in my own home is causing some kind of intellectual, artistic or paradigmatic tension which yearns for resolution or at least some kind of ad-hoc philosophical truce (a stalemate perhaps?)

I watch with her to try to understand and am confronted by my own baggage about certain things far too often. It makes me wonder whether my face actually contorts into a sneer during any other programs. I don't really know, but I know that my facial muscles definitely contort when I watch this program and abandon the quest for understanding for the far more accessible yet vinegar tinged disdain that I feel for so many shows about fashion (she also seems to love a program called – "What Not to Wear" – this discussion I will save for therapy.)

You may find it ironic that I would decry the artlessness of "Project Runway" since it's very medium (Television) in the minds of many relegates it to a category beneath consideration. I guess for me it is because I tend towards the optimistic view that the masses are fundamentally moved by art and that the medium itself (in this case Television) does not limit the possibilities. I have seen programs which are both enlightening and beautiful in storytelling, form and even intent on this box that sits in my living room. While it is suspiciously tainted by commerce it is important to remember that commerce has been a historical factor in art since the beginning. There was a consuming public buying tickets for Shakespeare's plays at the Globe and there was a rioting crowd to walk out on the Rite of Spring when Stravinsky first premiered it. Then again perhaps my populist interpretation is mere rationalizing since, for me, this exploration still started with Mötley Crüe and the Scorpions.

If you have not seen this program you probably instinctively know what it contains anyway. It pits several aspiring fashion designers in competition with one another for the praise and support of fashion icons. In the episodes she is watching lately the "judges" are Heidi Klum (a super model), Michael Kors (a successful fashion designer himself) and at least one other bratty sneering "expert" that I don't care enough about to look up. There seems to be a host who is in some way or another also connected to the fashion world. He is not a judge but wanders through the work area to clarify the assignment challenges and serve as de-facto narrator for the "action" and the drama. He has an accent of some sort which I cannot place – if I had to guess I would say he was born and bred in the same place that Richie Rich's butler grew up.

Last night's episode was the motivator for what I am writing now. The drama seems to be getting intense. There are four designers left in competition and each and every one of them was reduced to blubbering several times because the next step in competition for each of them represented achieving their life-long dream. Really? None of what these people are designing looks anything like anyone I would know would wear in their entire life! Maybe fashion is not art. Maybe the balance between art and commerce is skewed on a medium so profoundly influenced by the one and not the other. Maybe art is more about serving temporal and contextual ends than I have ever imagined. Maybe I am just a jerk who looks down on the aspirations of others.

There was a quote that I used to know from a movie that I saw several years ago that said something like: "some people can spend years in the library of congress and still not find enlightenment, others can unravel the secrets of the universe from a gum wrapper." I think that one of the things that this quote implies is that all things may be worthy of consideration. I KNOW that Project Runway means something and I know that my general feeling is that it means something that is fundamentally discouraging. The final four that I was watching last night (probably a re-run) may be the four horsemen of the apocalypse or they may be as significant as the last four American Idol contestants were to real meaning in the universe. What scares me, in what may be a far too myopic way, is that I don't see these people doing what they do in order to take flight –but instead to bathe in dollar bills and champagne.

The Scorpions may actually have bathed in dollar bills and champagne.


Tension: unresolved.