Rock n’ Roll Hair

            In the latest edition of Guitarworld magazine, we find ourselves looking at the visage of Mick Mars, guitarist of the band, Motley Crue, which is embarking on their final tour. Whether they tour again, or stay true to their pronounced exit from the stage, matters little to me, instead, what amazed me most was that even in his sixties, Mars has a full head of black hair, just as he did those thirty years ago when the Crue burst onto the world stage. Of course, Mars is not alone in this, even in his own band; all the Crue maintain the look they had back in the eighties. Now his face has the lines and cracks we all must suffer as we grow old, but the hair…..

            And this isn’t to pick on Motley Crue; any number of bands, performers from the sixties, seventies, and eighties still cling to the image they created in their youth, but young they ain’t. It’s this incongruity that fascinates me especially as younger artists outside the pop spectrum seem less inclined to create an image aside from body art and piercing. Why should we expect the remaining members of the Moody Blues, as an example, to have all that hair when we, their listeners don’t? Our hair has thinned and greyed; just survey any concert by a vintage act and the audience looks its age and then some. Shouldn't their's do the same?

            There are, of course, those who have chosen to change their appearance as they’ve gotten older; Rush, Peter Frampton, Ringo, and Charlie Watts as examples. After all, rock n’roll isn’t young anymore, either. It’s at least sixty years old, and denials aside, isn’t really the kids taking it to the Man. The whole nature of rock is in question as it ages and gentrifies into its many sub-genres. Name a great new rock band akin to those of the past! If the media is to believed, and I’m not necessarily anti-media, country music is on the ascent as rock fades, but today’s country isn’t exactly the rebirth of Maybelle Carter or Hank Williams; more Eagles lite than George Jones. Is that rock’s fate? To be warmed over Country? Is rock, as once conceived, like Jazz or Blues, trailing off, never to regain its former glory?

            And Hair? Well, it certainly isn’t a big thing these day, at least for men. This is my personal prejudice, but young men should glory in their hair while they have it. There’ll be many years left to run around looking like you just got out of prison or boot camp ( I’m probably dating myself here ). So maybe the whole hair thing is a nod to the virility it once conveyed to those strutting the stage, and those watching. We can, at least, pretent that virility doesn't decline with age. And if that means wigs, toupees, dyes, extensions; then by all means do what you’ve got to do; even if I don’t buy it. Besides, I understand it can be claimed as a business expense.

Because it's important to whine

The question arises for those with artistic ambitions; just how important it is that what they create is then presented to the wider world around them? For me, thanks to a rather severe case of the existential ‘why am I doing this’ blues; in which I seriously considered selling off all my instruments and equipment, it’s whether there’s worth in putting the work out there to begin with. Unlike when the material, in this case music, was first written and recorded back in the age of cassette tapes, when getting it out meant running around town trying to get people to listen, now we have the means to expose it to the great wide world, but, it also has to compete with the other billion voices seeking an audience as well. Ironically, you can now go from no one can hear it to no one wants to hear it. That may be overly pessimistic, but is there enough value to the person creating the work, to then spend the time necessary for it to be viewed or heard with the understanding that it may not be heard at all, or may be derided, criticized, lambasted, or flagged as a gross waste of anybody’s time?

As I write this, I sit on a pile of 90 plus songs, and 1 book, and vacillate as to what to do. On the one hand, I do want them to be listened to and read; on the other, I’m keenly aware that even if I put them all out there that doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be anything other than out there. It’s not even a matter of whether they will be like or appreciated, or dismissed as so much dreak. It’s the sinking feeling that it’s all a great waste of time. None of this happens in an afternoon, as anybody who has fallen into this habit will attest. It’s a lot of work, time, and effort. So, at some level, there needs to be some form of payoff, or acknowledgement, whether in personal or social recognition.

Am I whining? Absolutely. I believe it’s part of the artistic milieu. I want to be loved, admired, gloried; don’t judge me; love me! Yeah, it’s not going to happen, but I can dream. The more prosaic answer to all of this is do it, found your legacy and let history be the arbiter of it quality and benefit to mankind, because if history has to do something, it’s to determine our place in the human pantheon. I can cling to that in this roiling sea of existence. How's that for prosaic. Anyway, plod on and we won't ponder whether there's any monetary value to consider. That is a whole other can of hash.

Mr. Primitive

      After a lengthly sabbatical, during which I, in no particular order, wrote a book, had open heart surgery, and thought about nothing of any significance, the nature of my existence became clear to me: write more crap. So here it is in all it's misshapen horror, but first let us consider the moniker by which I ply this ignoble venture so that you may better understand what in God's name I'm talking about.
      Mr. Primitive. Meaning what? Well, it's pretty simple, no matter how hard we may seek to distance ourselves from our primate nature; our animalistic nature, we are what we are: animals. Voracious, solipsistic, occasionally funny animals. We are, in fact, physiologically no different from our caveman ancestors. If either were dropped into the world of the other as a child; either would be no worse off assuming who they ended up with were reasonably functioning. And isn't that really the operative phrase in any situation: reasonably functioning? I believe so.
      Naturally, we humans believe ourselves superior to the rest of the flora and fauna, not just our primate cousins. Never mind that gorillas and chimps are stronger than we are and could beat us to a pulp. We'd simply use our superior intellect and nuke them. We then prostrate ourselves; well, some do, about saving the Earth as if we would go on should something bad happen to her, the Earth. We're like that. The longer I live the more amusing I find the human condition. Our fraught head banging as something we do to wile away our time here, continuously plowing the furrows of the past; blithely ignorant that we are forever trod-ding the same miserable soil.
      Fortunately, many forsake the past, mostly by knowing nothing of it, as a means of avoiding the notion that we continually repeat the same mistakes as our forebears; you know, grandpa. Still, we confess our love for grandpa whether we have any idea of his misadventures or not. If it was good enough for him; why not us? Yes? Sure, what the hell. We do our time and pass the torch to the  young(er) so they may persist in the human folly that we so joyfully embrace. What else can they do? We're stuck here. We can dream that we're not held to the same limitations as our less fortunate Earthly cousins, but we're of the same biological limits and frailties which means we will not be traveling through time. We're good ol' Earth bound clodhoppers.
      So as we strut and fret upon this mortal coil, stuck like rats on a spinning ship; doing our best not to toss our cosmic cookies, I shall endeavor to persevere in voicing my own particularly pointless, or pointed commentary on what passes for existence at the particular moment in the ever spinning and expanding universe of which we're along for the ride.
     

A nation of adolescents

When I was a kid, there were certain things you did not do: swear, act rudely or be disrespectful; especially to those older than you, or be selfish and self-centered. Now that's all normal behavior.
Certainly explains a lot.

We have become a nation of people who do not want to grow up; to be grownups.

Examples are everywhere. Our politics are filled with individuals for whom compromise is anathema to them. Political parties that are " my way or the highway " in their attitudes towards anyone not buying into their beliefs. Consequently, everything is a struggle of ideology rather than a legislative responsibility. Yet politics is merely a reflection of our stunted national perspective which is inculcated with our unwillingness to accept the specter of aging and the responsibilities that go with being a grownup.

Being a grownup is no fun. You're expected to be responsible, put the needs of others before your own, balance what you want with what you need, and accept that life isn't fair. Does that sound like fun? Of course not. Being a grownup used to infer certain qualities; the above mentioned responsible, courteous, thoughtful; respectful. A grownup recognizes their place in the world; both good and not so good. Not everybody gets there in one piece, but as is often invoked; there is a time to put childish things away.

Except that few seem to want to do that anymore. America is noted as being the birthplace of the teenager. In olden times, there wasn't time to be a teenager; there was work to do. Maybe if you were a member of a wealthy family or a part of the aristocracy you could blow your adolescence, but for everyone else there wasn't time to moon about as you can today. And it's not necessarily that being a teenager has to change, but there comes a time to grow up, and for a lot of us, that isn't happening. Boorish behavior and a me first attitude, burnished with the great sense of entitlement and " specialness " that we've endowed our children with hasn't given way to a sense of the world greater than ourselves. Consequently, we're inundated with shallow interests in celebrities of no import, titillated by a prurient interest in sex, but unwilling to delve into the responsibilities and complexities of adult sexual activity, and an inordinate fascination with graphic cartoon violence. This gives us all manner of media offering the blow by blow vacuousness of modern celebrity; fame for it's own sake. Pervasive sexualization that preens and struts, giving us the bizarre surrealism of both mother and teenage daughter dressed like TV skanks, whether at school or at the mall, and probably at church, assuming they go, yet never goes beyond the surface and addresses the deep ambivalence we have with sex in this country. Then there's our obsession with violence. Whether on TV, the movies, in games, we wallow in gore and revenge, yet when real violence strikes we recoil and make grand gestures that last no more than a fortnight, or it's prison for everyone no matter the cost.

So why is this a problem? Is delaying adulthood such a bad thing? Aside from certain physical limitations, choosing when to grow up may not seem so important, but as with all things, even that requires a grownup assessment. The bigger problem is that this unwillingness to grow up has seeped into our collective national consciousness. At a time when we need to be responsible for the consequences of our actions; when we need to accept that we can't have it all and that what we do have isn't being paid for, when sacrifice is warranted for the sake of future generations, when we need to accept that hard work is required, acting like 15 year olds isn't going to cut it.

It's time to grow up, accept that no everything is about us, and go about the business of being grown up.

Faux Western

Has it really been three months since I wrote something?

Time flies. Yeah, I thought I'd have something better than that too.

One thing that did cross my river was going to see True Grit; the Coen brothers new film; and it got me thinking, given our recent political shout-about. Omnipotent government versus the ideal of the rugged individual as epitomized by western lore. A lot of mouth breathers and self aggrandizing shouters have festered the channels of communication with invocations of our impending doom as we slip slide into the abyss of the mommy state. Better to invigorate our national soul with the comfort food that is the idea that life and it's immediacies are significantly improved when our individualism trumps our need for community and it's inevitable propensity towards socialism. Better to starve than be sapped of our vigor. Certainly in the abstract, as a barometer of character, it may have it's virtues, as we may all seek to be glorious in our devotions to the cause, but as a workable solution to the good life, and THAT, my dear readers, is the crux of the problem, for the good life has no single measure; only the desires of each who dreams of it, and are inextricably bound up in the prosperity of community.

The movie, a remake of the John Wayne pic, and based on the novel by Charles Portis, is, as I find most Coen brothers films, unsettling in a good way. I don't note that as any objective critique, only that I respond that way when I watch their films. This is primarily due to their recognition of human supidity and hubris and the manner in with they allow it to inhabit the tone of their work. Again, that's simply my reaction and part of why I enjoy their films so much.

The premise is simple enough, after her father is murdered by the skeevy Tom Chaney, our heroine, Mattie Ross, seeks revenge through the capable, albeit drunken, one eyed Rooster Cogburn. Cogburn, as is wryly conveyed in the film, is not know for bringing men in alive. This renders the notion of Mattie to see Tom hang more bluster than a call to justice. In fact, justice is in short supply in this tale. So is morality and any abiding sense of community. Townspeople are, as often is the case in the fictionalized Hollywood version of the old west, scared selfish town dudes and their shrewish wives. There is no invocation of God other than of his grace and it's seeming randomness. Life is hardscrabble and apt to end at any moment. Only the hard and determined survive on their own. The rest huddle in town to be controlled by corrupt land barons, sheriffs, politicians, or marauding thugs. Makes you wonder how anyone managed to live through it.

The actual West was anything but what is presented on film. Community is what settled the West. Towns were not gunslinger heavens, and killers were not heroes venerated by the locals. Justice could be swift, and given human predisposition, occasionally misguided, ending in the wrong neck being stretched. It was community that kept people alive; allowed them to prosper. Posses were lawful associations charged with bringing the lawless to justice rather than the mobs the name is associated with. Saloons weren't gun club central as most towns required gun to be checked in when coming in to town.

This is where the films head off into symbolism and myth. In truth, if Tom Chaney did commit murder in town, he would have been arrested or chased down. That, of course, isn't very exciting and does nothing to perpetuate the western myth. It's nice to believe that the virtuous man ( or woman ) is immune to the clarion call of social depravity resting in the eyes of town folk; will stand up to all evil,and in the end carry, however uncomfortably ( thank you, Clint ), the banner of the good. True Grit subverts this. Vengeance is vengeance. There is no speech in the end of noble actions, only the cold turn of self righteousness; I did what I felt was right and no amount of argument will dissuade me of my belief. That her crusade nearly killed her is the price you pay for your vengeance. Perhaps God will sort things out in another life, but not in this one. Justice has no place because justice is a social construct that requires adjudication, the application of rights, burdens of proof, and the application of law. These are the hallmarks of community not individuality. Revenge carries no reveries of right, but the absolute of hate.

Mattie Ross got what she wanted and became what she sought.

Ode to the word processor

Churn as the world might; much of it diffuse and ill conceived, some things come along that are a Godsend. For me, it's the word processor. the nifty program I'm using now. Sure there are bigger things; the wheel, mathematics, movable type. One might also throw in cultural, industrial, and political advancements, but in truth those are slowly turning us into anonymous cogs in a machine we can't control.

But I digress.

The methodologies, if I may use such terms, of the past involved hand writing, block printing, presses, typewriters. All improvements, but all geared best to those who can put words to paper with a minimum of editing or rewriting. For the rest of us; an awful lot of work to get out what we mean to say in the manner we wish to express.

Word processors changed all that. Now you can put every little thought down, to be edited, rewritten, rearranged, purged, reformed, re-imagined without the need for reams of paper, cartridges, ribbons, whiteout, and the like. No more settling for OK, or doable because the prospect of rewriting drowns you in barrels of self loathing and pity. No more retyping an entire page due to a spelling or grammatical mistake. Instead corrections are made quickly and easily. Spelling and grammar can be checked by the program. Words, sentences, paragraphs; entire portions of texts moved or reconfigured by a keystroke.

For someone like me; sheer delight. As much as I like to pontificate; writing was a drudgery akin to counting peas on a plate. I found no joy in going back over texts to check for typos, grammatical errors, or misspellings because I knew I would find them and then be tasked, when I could be doing something else; anything else, to making things right. I don't like my work to appear malformed or lacking in a certain level of commitment, so, inevitably, my fastidiousness would be my undoing and I would be compelled to redo it.

The other problem I encountered was the willingness to accept mediocrity rather than execute another rewrite. It's good enough; it'll pass. Yeah, I'd really like to change this up, but it's due tomorrow, and I've spent enough time dealing with the production of the paper, and that's what we're talking about here, and I don't want to go through that again. Consequently, what could have been better, or maybe, even sublime was lost to my unwillingness to go the extra mile. Now I can carry on and on with no sense of proportion or decorum. Life's little pleasures indeed.

Naturally, there a few caveats; a few downsides. Hard drive might crash. Website might cease to exist. Clouds do blow away. Some programs are far more cumbersome than they need to be, and have so many features that to actually learn to use them would eat into valuable writing time. But all things being equal, for this writer, a wonderful thing.

To be a commodity

In this country we talk a good game about our individualism; about how we stand apart from the rest of the patsies walking this cruel world. You can see it in the resolute faces standing up to all the forces that would consume them. Shouting. Complaining. Venting their spleens as all good Americans have done in our two plus centuries of existence.

But it is ephemeral.

Unlike the pioneers who came before us, there are no more frontiers to run off to when civilization cuts too close to the bone. Our option, in this the twenty-first century, is go off grid, as the euphemism goes. Growing our own crops, building our own mud huts, and being eaten by bears. It's a nice idea, much like our rugged individualism. It's not reality, but who cares. We can foster any delusion we choose to. We're Americans, dammit!! We've got our first amendment rights. We're packing heat; so all you pointy headed bureaucrats watch out or we'll..............., well I don't know if we've quite got that figured out, but we're armed to the teeth. We'll throw down the government, retake the country, and remake it in whatever Hollywood vision suits us. I don't think we'd actually want to go back to the halcyon days of yore, after all people died young, worked six, seven days a week, didn't have refrigerators or McDonald's, and actually feared being eaten by bears. Business was ruthless, and labor ( that would have been most of us ) took what they could get, because the option was starvation. Think I'm kidding? Look it up.

Sure it all looks good through the gauzy haze of make believe, but it's not realistic, any more than giving the great plains back to the Lakota is, although the Lakota would probably be quite pleased.

No, our great conundrum, my little droogies, is that we are or have become a commodity, and that's what bites so hard. Historically, there have been the rulers and the rest of us. Those of us bathed in the glow of middle class suburbia would have a hard time reconciling ourselves to the position of landless labor, serf, or slave. Most of us would delusionally see ourselves as Caesars, kings, and marauders such as the great Genghis. But that's unlikely. More likely we'd be cannon fodder, servants; of the house or of the land, maybe craftsmen if we belonged to a guild, or merchants, which might or might not be a good thing depending on the age. Maybe you'd could be in the usury business, but those folks were universally hated, much as they are these days.

So where does that leave us?

At work you are a resource to be managed, utilized, outsourced, reorganized, or downsized. It isn't personal; it's business. It's important to be clear eyed about these things less ye be fed to the bears and left for dead. This is the land of opportunity just so you know. Any number of sages will assuage you of your fears and send you down the road of enlightenment once you buy their latest book, or CD, or pay your subscription to their website. These are the same thoughtful souls who promised you could make millions flipping houses with no money down. That circumstances, social position, and luck might play a part in success is of no matter.

When you're sick, you're a customer; a value based on what your insurance, if you have it, your savings, or that charity care will provide. Think insurance companies dwell on poor Jimmy's plight or intrinsic value to society when deciding whether to pay for that coronary bypass? Doubtful. It's an expense to be balanced against revenues, and as we all know no business stays in business when expenses exceed revenues. So if instead of a new heart you get a shot of morphine and "you've lived a good life ". Don't take it personally; it's business. It's your turn to go.

Makes you want to go out and buy something doesn't it? Good. How the hell else are we going to dig ourselves out of this mess. Consumption, conspicuous or otherwise, is what we do. It's what our economy is geared towards. perhaps a few boobs go on about a better world, or making the most of the time we have, but, come on; that ain't gonna happen. There's no money in it. We're on this earth to buy stuff whether we need it or not.

Feel better? Some will, and some won't. Some will accept their fate and be laconically washed out with the tide. Others will bray at the horror; the horror, stomp their feet, scream and yell, make threats, and then vote in some moron who tells them what they want to hear. That the moron won't deliver is politics as usual. After much exhaustion he too, will be pummeled and washed out with the tide. It's all too beautiful.

Don't take it personally; it's just business.