This was the stage for Barack Obama to mount his campaign, and he committed himself early to weaseling on war. He couldn’t risk being male-baited as antiwar, but he had to be anti-Bush. Solution: Call Iraq the wrong war, Afghanistan the right war, and blame Bush for inappropriate emphasis.
A sensible tactical decision, given that most people in the US had never opposed the occupation of Afghanistan and most were turning against the debacle in Iraq. That the tables got turned on him with the so-called “success of the Surge” by Republicans was still insufficient to overcome the bitter public feeling against George W. Bush for not being a winner; and Barack Obama rode his campaign juggernaut into the White House with the Afghan monkey already on his back.
Barack Obama may have had a choice in this matter, I’ll contend… in some parallel universe. But whoever was going to be President of the United States did not have a choice, given the actual conditions. So President Obama never had a choice. These folks know political operations, and they know their constraints.
Antiwar emasculates, and Obama had had to overcome the race question enough to jump through the electoral hoops. Overcoming black stereotypes was edgy enough at this juncture, there could be no question of his martial masculinity. He had to show his balls as his bona fides. But there is another reason that President Obama has to stay at war.
War is necessary for our way of life.
No viable candidate for POTUS can be antiwar right now, because so many American voters secretly know that preserving our current way of life requires war. And we don’t know any other way of life.
"War is necessary for our way of life"
Go read Stan Goff at Feral Scholar, on "Obama's War & the Game". Here's a short excerpt:
Totally disconnected thoughts on music, or Belated Mid-year Music Roundup, part two
I haven't listened to much new music this year, but I'm always listening. In my mid-year round-up, for which this amounts to the much belated and superfluous part 2, I neglected to mention what is far and away my new song of the year: Bill Callahan's cover of Kath Bloom's "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" (which was recorded for Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute to the Songs of Kath Bloom). I admit that I'd never heard of Kath Bloom before this year, and still haven't heard her music, but if it's anything like the quality of Bill Callahan's version of her song, then it must be worth seeking out. (Though fans of the originals may be understandably bitter at Bloom's apparent obscurity, still that's no call for completely missing the boat on Callahan's cover--"adult alternative"? No. Just, no.)
Here, anyway, is Bill playing the song live (this clip first seen via Steve, who is also responsible for privately sending me the link to the studio version--thanks Steve!):
Ok, got the song of the year out of the way. Other thoughts:
Of the first four Talking Heads albums, which are the only four that matter, I remain convinced that Remain In Light is the fourth best. I prefer the more austere sound of the unaugmented group. For years I would have said Fear of Music was my favorite, but it may now be More Songs about Buildings and Food.
Outside of the sublime If I Could Only Fly, can anyone rep for late-period Merle Haggard? I have to think he has had a few more gems in the last couple of decades.
I don't listen to the radio much, but I want to say a few words about 96.5 FM out of Chincoteague, Virginia. Basically a rock station, but clearly its own thing. Dylan's "My Back Pages", some Zep, George Jones, some obscure Fleetwood Mac (or solo Lindsey?) alternate take of "Big Love"... the songs I didn't like were at least atypical: a Bryan Adams song that probably hasn't seen the light of day in years, that weird 4 Non Blondes hit, stuff like that. The point is that there didn't appear to be any discernible playlist, most of the commercials were local, actual public services were performed on air by people who sounded like they actually cared... All radio stations should be like this one, in spirit.
I went through another Beatles period recently, in part thanks to Marcello Carlin's superb blog, Then Play Long, in which he writes at length about every album to reach #1 in the UK since 1956. He's made The Sound of Music soundtrack sound fascinating, and the Monkees emerge as vastly more interesting than this listener ever gave them credit for being. But more impressively, he's managed to say something new and interesting about over-analyzed albums from the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan (the posts on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and John Wesley Harding are incredible--I think it's how he illuminates the music, where other writers are so often fixated on Dylan's lyrics). The Beatles in particular. I've loved all of his posts on Beatles albums, especially those on Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, and Beatles for Sale. The one on Sgt. Pepper had me listening to that album for the first time in years, with much greater appreciation (if only because I was paying more attention). Great music writing.
We've inherited some children's music from a friend. Some of it I find I actually like (though I have to say that Raffi, bland and inoffensive as he is, is much more tolerable to simply listen to than to view--there's something weirdly creepy about that dude's eyes! But, hey, the kids all love him. It's a mystery. [Actually, it's not: he's respectful of them and he sings pleasant songs that they like to sing along to. I'm just being a critic.]) In particular, I'm fond of Donovan's Pied Piper album. We've already listened to this cd numerous times. Something tells me that Devendra Banhart spent a lot of time with it. (I can hear him singing "I Love My Shirt".)
Belated entry in the sad songs sweepstakes: "I Keep Holding Back the Tears" by the immortal Souled American.
Not enough is said about Jim O'Rourke's wonderful "Prelude to 110 or 220/Women of the World". (I hear he has a new record coming out, after a long hiatus.)
My favorite working male vocalist: Bill Callahan; female vocalist: Neko Case; group: Animal Collective. None of which will surprise regular readers.
I count myself fortunate to have caught Joe McPhee live more than once. Same with William Parker.
I was obsessed with Jane's Addiction back in the early 1990s. But then it turned out Perry Farrell was hard to take (and the less said about Dave Navarro the better) and Porno for Pyros was not my idea of a good time (given that they sucked). So the Jane's cds got sort of forgotten, lost in the big wall of cds. I loaded Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual onto the iPod not too long ago. Verdict: the former is a little less than I remember it being, a little too, well, "shocking", though I'm still a sucker for "Summertime Rolls"; the latter, however, really holds up well. A great, expansive, meandering rock album, which sounds fantastic (where Nothing's Shocking sounds like it was recorded through a cardboard tube). Even "Been Caught Stealing".
On a related note, of the so-called grunge bands that I was so into back in the early 90s, Soundgarden isn't holding up as well as, say, Pearl Jam, or Alice in Chains' Dirt (Nirvana, ironically, doesn't count as grunge). I still like much of Superunknown and "Rusty Cage" and "Jesus Christ Pose" from Badmotorfinger, but man, the rest is rather nondescript.
For those of you who may have wondered, yes we are familiar with the singer-songwriter named Mirah. In fact, she is the original source for our daughter's name--not that she's named after her, or that we're huge fans or anything, but we were struggling with names, and hers popped into my head one night and we liked it. We are fans though, at least of C'mon Miracle (not sure yet about (A)Spera).
By the way, I only recently zeroed in on the lyrics to Mirah's song "Jerusalem", from C'mon Miracle. I think I may previously have been afraid to pay too much attention, but these are pretty good:
I recently made a mix cd for a friend, on which I included "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" and "I Keep Holding Back the Tears", both mentioned above, but also "Beer & Kisses" by Amy Rigby. I'm working on another, on which I hope to include Rigby's "Down Side of Love". Does anyone listen to Amy Rigby? These songs are both off of her excellent Diary of a Mod Housewife from 1996. I remember it was very highly regarded that year, and I dutifully bought a copy. The narrative was that she'd been a rocker but then got married and had children and disappeared (she was apparently no Kristin Hersh), before coming back with this record (after a breakup, I think, and the record's lyrics seem to confirm the memory). But, as happens so often, even for one with a music habit as ridiculous as mine became, I never followed up with her, though I liked the cd very much. I know she's released music since then--does anyone have anything to say about her? Any other cds one should try?
I am too old for Death Cab for Cutie. I am too old for Arcade Fire. I am too old for the Rapture. I am too old for Interpol. I am too old for Arctic Monkeys. I am too old for Art Brut. I am probably too old for Broken Social Scene, though I admit I liked that You Forgot It In People record quite a bit (but I'm already not sure it's aged well, and I didn't like the self-titled one at all). (Some of you may notice that these have all been Pitchfork-approved indie bands du jour at one time or another. But: I am not too old for Deerhoof. I am not too old for Animal Collective. I am not too old for the Microphones/Mount Eerie [though I remain mystified by the over-the-top love for The Glow Pt. 2]). I am too old for emo. I am too old for metal (as much as I can appreciate, say, High on Fire and Mastodon, to name just two rather high profile and completely awesome metal bands, I cannot listen to them at the correct, necessary volume. My ears are too sensitive, too fragile, too damaged, too old. People listen to High on Fire through earbuds? A generation of deaf people!).
I mean to say, by the above, that it's one thing to listen to new music, it's one thing to follow musicians down new paths, keeping up with old favorites, but I wonder if there isn't something unseemly about the attempt at remaining up-to-date well into serious adulthood. I wonder if it's not part of what keeps us not young but infantile, or rather, distracted. It becomes consumerist frenzy, this need that must be filled (something like a manufactured consent, of sorts). I also wonder if it isn't convenient for me to come around to such an idea only since I've abandoned my own serious efforts at keeping up. Do I need to know what every hip band of 20 year-olds, however inventive, is up to this and every year? Should I? Am I wrong to call the whole process into question? How many records need to exist? How many can you listen to?
Here, anyway, is Bill playing the song live (this clip first seen via Steve, who is also responsible for privately sending me the link to the studio version--thanks Steve!):
Ok, got the song of the year out of the way. Other thoughts:
Of the first four Talking Heads albums, which are the only four that matter, I remain convinced that Remain In Light is the fourth best. I prefer the more austere sound of the unaugmented group. For years I would have said Fear of Music was my favorite, but it may now be More Songs about Buildings and Food.
Outside of the sublime If I Could Only Fly, can anyone rep for late-period Merle Haggard? I have to think he has had a few more gems in the last couple of decades.
I don't listen to the radio much, but I want to say a few words about 96.5 FM out of Chincoteague, Virginia. Basically a rock station, but clearly its own thing. Dylan's "My Back Pages", some Zep, George Jones, some obscure Fleetwood Mac (or solo Lindsey?) alternate take of "Big Love"... the songs I didn't like were at least atypical: a Bryan Adams song that probably hasn't seen the light of day in years, that weird 4 Non Blondes hit, stuff like that. The point is that there didn't appear to be any discernible playlist, most of the commercials were local, actual public services were performed on air by people who sounded like they actually cared... All radio stations should be like this one, in spirit.
I went through another Beatles period recently, in part thanks to Marcello Carlin's superb blog, Then Play Long, in which he writes at length about every album to reach #1 in the UK since 1956. He's made The Sound of Music soundtrack sound fascinating, and the Monkees emerge as vastly more interesting than this listener ever gave them credit for being. But more impressively, he's managed to say something new and interesting about over-analyzed albums from the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan (the posts on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and John Wesley Harding are incredible--I think it's how he illuminates the music, where other writers are so often fixated on Dylan's lyrics). The Beatles in particular. I've loved all of his posts on Beatles albums, especially those on Please Please Me, With the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night, and Beatles for Sale. The one on Sgt. Pepper had me listening to that album for the first time in years, with much greater appreciation (if only because I was paying more attention). Great music writing.
We've inherited some children's music from a friend. Some of it I find I actually like (though I have to say that Raffi, bland and inoffensive as he is, is much more tolerable to simply listen to than to view--there's something weirdly creepy about that dude's eyes! But, hey, the kids all love him. It's a mystery. [Actually, it's not: he's respectful of them and he sings pleasant songs that they like to sing along to. I'm just being a critic.]) In particular, I'm fond of Donovan's Pied Piper album. We've already listened to this cd numerous times. Something tells me that Devendra Banhart spent a lot of time with it. (I can hear him singing "I Love My Shirt".)
Belated entry in the sad songs sweepstakes: "I Keep Holding Back the Tears" by the immortal Souled American.
Not enough is said about Jim O'Rourke's wonderful "Prelude to 110 or 220/Women of the World". (I hear he has a new record coming out, after a long hiatus.)
My favorite working male vocalist: Bill Callahan; female vocalist: Neko Case; group: Animal Collective. None of which will surprise regular readers.
I count myself fortunate to have caught Joe McPhee live more than once. Same with William Parker.
I was obsessed with Jane's Addiction back in the early 1990s. But then it turned out Perry Farrell was hard to take (and the less said about Dave Navarro the better) and Porno for Pyros was not my idea of a good time (given that they sucked). So the Jane's cds got sort of forgotten, lost in the big wall of cds. I loaded Nothing's Shocking and Ritual de lo Habitual onto the iPod not too long ago. Verdict: the former is a little less than I remember it being, a little too, well, "shocking", though I'm still a sucker for "Summertime Rolls"; the latter, however, really holds up well. A great, expansive, meandering rock album, which sounds fantastic (where Nothing's Shocking sounds like it was recorded through a cardboard tube). Even "Been Caught Stealing".
On a related note, of the so-called grunge bands that I was so into back in the early 90s, Soundgarden isn't holding up as well as, say, Pearl Jam, or Alice in Chains' Dirt (Nirvana, ironically, doesn't count as grunge). I still like much of Superunknown and "Rusty Cage" and "Jesus Christ Pose" from Badmotorfinger, but man, the rest is rather nondescript.
For those of you who may have wondered, yes we are familiar with the singer-songwriter named Mirah. In fact, she is the original source for our daughter's name--not that she's named after her, or that we're huge fans or anything, but we were struggling with names, and hers popped into my head one night and we liked it. We are fans though, at least of C'mon Miracle (not sure yet about (A)Spera).
By the way, I only recently zeroed in on the lyrics to Mirah's song "Jerusalem", from C'mon Miracle. I think I may previously have been afraid to pay too much attention, but these are pretty good:
So now jerusalem, you know that it's not right
After all you've been through, you should know better than
To become the wicked ones almighty god once saved you from
I recently made a mix cd for a friend, on which I included "The Breeze/My Baby Cries" and "I Keep Holding Back the Tears", both mentioned above, but also "Beer & Kisses" by Amy Rigby. I'm working on another, on which I hope to include Rigby's "Down Side of Love". Does anyone listen to Amy Rigby? These songs are both off of her excellent Diary of a Mod Housewife from 1996. I remember it was very highly regarded that year, and I dutifully bought a copy. The narrative was that she'd been a rocker but then got married and had children and disappeared (she was apparently no Kristin Hersh), before coming back with this record (after a breakup, I think, and the record's lyrics seem to confirm the memory). But, as happens so often, even for one with a music habit as ridiculous as mine became, I never followed up with her, though I liked the cd very much. I know she's released music since then--does anyone have anything to say about her? Any other cds one should try?
I am too old for Death Cab for Cutie. I am too old for Arcade Fire. I am too old for the Rapture. I am too old for Interpol. I am too old for Arctic Monkeys. I am too old for Art Brut. I am probably too old for Broken Social Scene, though I admit I liked that You Forgot It In People record quite a bit (but I'm already not sure it's aged well, and I didn't like the self-titled one at all). (Some of you may notice that these have all been Pitchfork-approved indie bands du jour at one time or another. But: I am not too old for Deerhoof. I am not too old for Animal Collective. I am not too old for the Microphones/Mount Eerie [though I remain mystified by the over-the-top love for The Glow Pt. 2]). I am too old for emo. I am too old for metal (as much as I can appreciate, say, High on Fire and Mastodon, to name just two rather high profile and completely awesome metal bands, I cannot listen to them at the correct, necessary volume. My ears are too sensitive, too fragile, too damaged, too old. People listen to High on Fire through earbuds? A generation of deaf people!).
I mean to say, by the above, that it's one thing to listen to new music, it's one thing to follow musicians down new paths, keeping up with old favorites, but I wonder if there isn't something unseemly about the attempt at remaining up-to-date well into serious adulthood. I wonder if it's not part of what keeps us not young but infantile, or rather, distracted. It becomes consumerist frenzy, this need that must be filled (something like a manufactured consent, of sorts). I also wonder if it isn't convenient for me to come around to such an idea only since I've abandoned my own serious efforts at keeping up. Do I need to know what every hip band of 20 year-olds, however inventive, is up to this and every year? Should I? Am I wrong to call the whole process into question? How many records need to exist? How many can you listen to?
On a treadmill
This blog is mired in a serious malaise, one that at times feels terminal. Though I don't have any desire to quit, lately I have been finding it extremely difficult to finish writing posts that I begin. Part of the problem, as ever, is my tendency to link too many ideas together, resulting in so much rambling, bad writing. Just when I think I've gotten the hang of it all, I invariably hit a snag, writing slows down, ideas dry up. Or they come to me, but on the train, in whole paragraphs, good ones I'd like to think, but who can write on the train? (The Marc commuter train is not the smoothest ride in the world, and my handwriting is poor enough as it is.) And if I wrote on the train, anyway, when would I read? (Never, by the way, is the answer to that one. I don't think my reading at home this calendar year has added up to more than a few hundred pages.)
One problem, I realize, is my reluctance to just put it out there. I persist in thinking that I should have read this or that before expressing an idea. When it comes to the actual writing itself, the germ of the idea gets buried, in fact unwritten, as I bog myself down in shaping the introductory remarks or the background. A bog that weighs me down, when what I desire, what I value, is lightness. (God, I looked at my numerous posts in draft status, and there's an earlier unfinished whinge about how I can't write... I'd naturally forgotten all about it.)
All this is to say that I have a lot that I've been wanting, and failing, to say here. Here are just a few topics I hope to get around to finishing posts on in the nearish future, though I make no promises:
J.M. Coetzee (on Diary of a Bad Year, naturally, while everyone else's moving onto Summertime...)
Flannery O'Connor and politics and literature
Evelyn Scott (again)
Art and Ontology
Chomsky, an appreciation, and more
Conservatism and relational political spectrums
Modernism and post-Modernism
a line or two about Gayl Jones' Corredigora (in connection with Modernism)
ideas about primitive accumulation and lost social orders
more on Blanchot, possibly finally getting into his ideas on communism
communism as the original human, cultural state (circling back on Art and Ontology, touching on Chris Knight and Heidegger and more)
the role of play in the former, as well as in art, and what that means for us, moving forward (combining, if possible, Knight and Josipovici, among others; in truth, this feels like my main unwritten book)
One problem, I realize, is my reluctance to just put it out there. I persist in thinking that I should have read this or that before expressing an idea. When it comes to the actual writing itself, the germ of the idea gets buried, in fact unwritten, as I bog myself down in shaping the introductory remarks or the background. A bog that weighs me down, when what I desire, what I value, is lightness. (God, I looked at my numerous posts in draft status, and there's an earlier unfinished whinge about how I can't write... I'd naturally forgotten all about it.)
All this is to say that I have a lot that I've been wanting, and failing, to say here. Here are just a few topics I hope to get around to finishing posts on in the nearish future, though I make no promises:
We Are the Ones
Big events are unfolding in real life (not bad news), so the blog has necessarily suffered (though in truth, I admit, it was suffering already). I hope to return to more semi-regular posting soon-ish, when I expect to complete some interesting posts in the works. I recall, too, that I'd intended to post a follow-up entry to my recent mid-year music review (I can only assume this is what I meant by including "part one" in the title), but even something as simple as that has eluded my powers of late. Maybe later.
In the meantime, some political song lyrics! (Why not, right?)
I once described music of the Coup (you may remember their 2001 album Party Music, the original cover art of which featured a shot of our rappers blowing up the World Trade Center) as "danceable, left-wing agit-rap". They are unapologetically political and groovy. Well, I've been listening to them a bit lately and thought I'd share the words to "We are the Ones", from Pick a Bigger Weapon:
We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite
(Check it out now)
Once upon a time when crack was gold
And hip-hop was not yet platinum sold
I scoured the streets for stacks to fold
My mood like my hair was relaxed and blowed
I hated police and my teachers were beasts
My heat in the trunk of the classic Caprice
The one university, I knew was Yale
So I cooked it, bagged it, put it on sale
Now philosophically you'd be opposed
to one inhaling coke via mouth or the nose
But economically I would propose
that you go eat a dick as employment had froze
And I felt like an abandoned child
Left to fend for myself in the wild
While every courtroom, judge and gavel
were there to bury me under the gravel
Or at the bottom of the finest malt ale
Observe; you'll find without fail
That in every neighborhood and penitentiary
There exists many others who are similar to me and
We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite
(Check it out now)
In later years I lost some peers
Who mixed burners with Belvedere
And took shots from gung-ho cashiers
The world was cold yet hell was near
So I seek for a kilo
And my stack got a little bit taller like Skee-Lo
A street CEO
There was all of this heroin and not one hero
The intensity was fortified
As I clenched five digits on the forty-five
Barely down at the retail store I would detail more
But I don't wish this action to be glorified
There was a plan I was eager to listen
To not sleep in the park in the fetal position
Having to wipe off canine fecal emission
Otherwise I'd survive without legal permission
It's an equal division and then we go to prison, which is a little decision
All I wanted was a Regal to glisten
And my kids would have meat in the kitchen and complete ammunition
It's a given once the people are driven that
We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite
(Check it out now)
Get your work up! Get your work up!
We are born from the mildew, the rust, the heathenous lust
The dreams in the dust, the evidence flushed
The grieving is just, they're thieving from us
Insulted and cussed, this evening we bust
Appears unstable and under the table
We like free speech but we love free cable
We're taught from the cradle the Bill Gates fable
Which leads to high speeds in Buick LeSables
We have no excuses just great alibis
And poker faces you can't analyze
Our politicians sell our soul and our cries
With blood on their hands they can't sanitize
We're the have-nots, but we're also the gon'-gets
Not just talkin 'bout the Lex with the chrome kits
You can get that by yourself with the four-fifth
Let's all own shit then toast with Patron hits
Update: Since this is the Internet and everything, it occurs to me I should include the actual song. Here goes:
In the meantime, some political song lyrics! (Why not, right?)
I once described music of the Coup (you may remember their 2001 album Party Music, the original cover art of which featured a shot of our rappers blowing up the World Trade Center) as "danceable, left-wing agit-rap". They are unapologetically political and groovy. Well, I've been listening to them a bit lately and thought I'd share the words to "We are the Ones", from Pick a Bigger Weapon:
We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite
(Check it out now)
Once upon a time when crack was gold
And hip-hop was not yet platinum sold
I scoured the streets for stacks to fold
My mood like my hair was relaxed and blowed
I hated police and my teachers were beasts
My heat in the trunk of the classic Caprice
The one university, I knew was Yale
So I cooked it, bagged it, put it on sale
Now philosophically you'd be opposed
to one inhaling coke via mouth or the nose
But economically I would propose
that you go eat a dick as employment had froze
And I felt like an abandoned child
Left to fend for myself in the wild
While every courtroom, judge and gavel
were there to bury me under the gravel
Or at the bottom of the finest malt ale
Observe; you'll find without fail
That in every neighborhood and penitentiary
There exists many others who are similar to me and
We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite
(Check it out now)
In later years I lost some peers
Who mixed burners with Belvedere
And took shots from gung-ho cashiers
The world was cold yet hell was near
So I seek for a kilo
And my stack got a little bit taller like Skee-Lo
A street CEO
There was all of this heroin and not one hero
The intensity was fortified
As I clenched five digits on the forty-five
Barely down at the retail store I would detail more
But I don't wish this action to be glorified
There was a plan I was eager to listen
To not sleep in the park in the fetal position
Having to wipe off canine fecal emission
Otherwise I'd survive without legal permission
It's an equal division and then we go to prison, which is a little decision
All I wanted was a Regal to glisten
And my kids would have meat in the kitchen and complete ammunition
It's a given once the people are driven that
We - we are the ones
We'll seal your fate, tear down your state, go get yo' guns
We - we came to fight
It's yo' disgrace, smash up your place, that's just polite
(Check it out now)
Get your work up! Get your work up!
We are born from the mildew, the rust, the heathenous lust
The dreams in the dust, the evidence flushed
The grieving is just, they're thieving from us
Insulted and cussed, this evening we bust
Appears unstable and under the table
We like free speech but we love free cable
We're taught from the cradle the Bill Gates fable
Which leads to high speeds in Buick LeSables
We have no excuses just great alibis
And poker faces you can't analyze
Our politicians sell our soul and our cries
With blood on their hands they can't sanitize
We're the have-nots, but we're also the gon'-gets
Not just talkin 'bout the Lex with the chrome kits
You can get that by yourself with the four-fifth
Let's all own shit then toast with Patron hits
Update: Since this is the Internet and everything, it occurs to me I should include the actual song. Here goes:
Not so focused thoughts on politics and government. . .
lenin is typically great on health care and the evil totalitarianism of the National Health Service in England. . . speaking of fears of such horrors, Dennis Perrin observes that "Over the last quarter, the number of clueless white Americans rose by thirty-seven percent." White people. What can you do with 'em? (Among the heartening take home messages of the public discourse surrounding the Gates Affair is how eagerly white people embrace the logic of the police state. Remind me again why I read comment threads?) In innocent moments, one is tempted to wonder where such widespread ignorance and stupidity comes from. It's not that there aren't legitimate criticisms of Obama's "plan" (Black Agenda Report offers a few here), but people are just bonkers. Socialism? Really? No, not really. As Tim Wise points out, the cry of "socialism!" is invariably coded racial language and always was. Not that we haven't seen plenty of non-coded racial language.
Racially coded or not, though, there is a weird fear or distrust of government. Many white people have been conditioned to believe that government is this evil thing, as well as necessarily incompetent, bumbling, bureaucratic, and so on. Bitch Phd writes yesterday about the things government provides for us and the ways in which we personally benefit from all the government does. It's a useful reminder, or should be, for all those who so often forget. She includes a photo which identifies and labels various government-provided items or services shown; also, the picture is of an anti-taxes rally, and one woman is holding a sign that reads "Cut Taxes Not Defense". It's not clear where such people think the funds for "defense" comes from if not taxes. But that point leads into a couple of things about Bitch's post that struck me (aside from the very good point she is making with it). First, the list of items gives the impression that "government", in its benevolent wisdom, has simply provided these things, from on high. As if every one of the positive functions of government, outside of basic infrastructure, wasn't the result of pressure from below.
This leads me to the next thing: how deeply militarized even her short list is. The very jumping off point for it is her observation that the Internet is not only a governmental creation, but that it came out of DARPA. She mentions her husband's various DoD-related jobs over the years and their VA-financed mortgages. I don't mean by highlighting these points to sound critical of her at all. My own job depends on there being a continual supply of disabled veterans, and I spent most of the first eight years of my life living on Naval bases. The point is that so many of us, regardless of our political outlook, work in situations that directly depend on massive spending on "defense". Our lives are intertwined with the military-industrial complex to an enormous extent, an extent to which most of us are generally unaware. Much of the technology we drool over came out of military research. Countless regional and local economies would all but collapse without the presence of the military. This is the process that has happened without the public's consent, which has warped the very fabric of society for decades without anyone seeming to notice. The ongoing threat to democracy, and obstacle to necessary change, should be obvious. Instead people are afraid of some mild liberal reforms of health care and, still, always it seems, black people.
Racially coded or not, though, there is a weird fear or distrust of government. Many white people have been conditioned to believe that government is this evil thing, as well as necessarily incompetent, bumbling, bureaucratic, and so on. Bitch Phd writes yesterday about the things government provides for us and the ways in which we personally benefit from all the government does. It's a useful reminder, or should be, for all those who so often forget. She includes a photo which identifies and labels various government-provided items or services shown; also, the picture is of an anti-taxes rally, and one woman is holding a sign that reads "Cut Taxes Not Defense". It's not clear where such people think the funds for "defense" comes from if not taxes. But that point leads into a couple of things about Bitch's post that struck me (aside from the very good point she is making with it). First, the list of items gives the impression that "government", in its benevolent wisdom, has simply provided these things, from on high. As if every one of the positive functions of government, outside of basic infrastructure, wasn't the result of pressure from below.
This leads me to the next thing: how deeply militarized even her short list is. The very jumping off point for it is her observation that the Internet is not only a governmental creation, but that it came out of DARPA. She mentions her husband's various DoD-related jobs over the years and their VA-financed mortgages. I don't mean by highlighting these points to sound critical of her at all. My own job depends on there being a continual supply of disabled veterans, and I spent most of the first eight years of my life living on Naval bases. The point is that so many of us, regardless of our political outlook, work in situations that directly depend on massive spending on "defense". Our lives are intertwined with the military-industrial complex to an enormous extent, an extent to which most of us are generally unaware. Much of the technology we drool over came out of military research. Countless regional and local economies would all but collapse without the presence of the military. This is the process that has happened without the public's consent, which has warped the very fabric of society for decades without anyone seeming to notice. The ongoing threat to democracy, and obstacle to necessary change, should be obvious. Instead people are afraid of some mild liberal reforms of health care and, still, always it seems, black people.
Mirah at One Year
I hope to get my act together soon and get some posts up, but in the meantime, we celebrated our daughter's first birthday yesterday. Happy Birthday, Mirah!
Here are two recent pictures, one from last week, one from yesterday's party:
Here are two recent pictures, one from last week, one from yesterday's party:
Notes on Evelyn Scott's Migrations
So, you ask, how's that whole Evelyn Scott project coming along? Not quite as smoothly as I'd hoped, but then whoever said literature was supposed to be smooth? I still have another Escapade-related post in the works, but in the meantime I've been looking into a couple of her novels.
In the wake of my happy discovery of Scott and my fruitful reading of Escapade, I checked Migrations and The Wave out of the library with some excitement. Some of this excitement was dissipated upon opening the two volumes, both of which are historical novels of sorts and on first blush appear to be much more conventional than I'd hoped. But then they were both published, still, in the late 1920s, so what seems conventional now may not have been then. Migrations is the shorter of the two, by far, and is the earlier novel, so it was no contest which one I'd attempt to tackle first. In addition, Migrations is subtitled An Arabesque in Histories, which sounds much more interesting than narratives of the Civil War, the subtitle to The Wave. Having now read Migrations, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, though I certainly enjoyed large portions of it.
"Arabesque" is one of those words I've always avoided looking up, preferring instead to just let it remain suggestive in its strangeness. (I think I first encountered it used by a writer describing the music of the Throwing Muses: "Zep arabesques" he wrote; the phrase seemed to capture something elusive about the band's music, though I really didn't know precisely what he meant. But I digress.) I did finally look it up and, with all apologies to Andrew Seal, it means, when applied to the fine arts, "a sinuous, spiraling, undulating, or serpentine line or linear motif." Here I'd say it means a more or less free indirect prose and stream of consciousness narrative, in the multiple-character Mrs. Dalloway sense (assuming my memory of Mrs. Dalloway is remotely accurate). A species of "pyschological realism". Only occasionally does it appear as if the third-person descriptions of the external world are not also reflected in the direct experience of a character but belong to an outside observer, one who objectively knows, and, indeed, the one occasion when a new character's back story is extensively filled in by a narrator's voice, it feels gratuitous.
The novel takes place in the 1850s and is divided into three chapters, each with several sub-divisions, with interrelated characters but no real plot or narrative arc uniting them other than the theme hinted at by the title. In chapters one and three, we're among slaveholders and slaves in Tennessee. Some of the slaveholders are ambivalent about owning slaves, though not usually for any discernible moral reasons; they all think they treat their slaves well. In both chapters, a slave runs away; in chapter three this leads to a confrontation between mob justice and a suspected abolitionist--who nevertheless owns slaves of his own--and his scandalously mixed-race ("quadroon") wife. Chapter two is considerably longer than the others and traces the journey to San Francisco (in the wake of the gold rush), by way of Jamaica and Panama, of a married couple who've left the town in Tennessee in search of better opportunities.
The book is interesting as a depiction of aspects of life in the antebellum South, but I admit that my attention occasionally flagged the closer it veered to reading like a semi-objective historical narrative, however unresolved. The characters are much concerned with the nature of their own existence, and Scott invests her female characters especially with rich, complicated inner lives, bound up in questions of class, gender, and race. We are also treated to the slaves' thoughts and inner struggles. Beyond The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I have no direct experience with fiction from this time or earlier that deals with slavery and slaves, so I can't say anything about how "progressive" this may or may not have been, but I thought it was worth noting. And it appears that Evelyn Scott aspired to be as "realistic" as possible, so she attempted to render the speech of the slaves in dialect, as well as that of poor whites, or other characters not of the slaveholding class predominant in the book. The language and thoughts of that class is, perhaps inevitably, the more or less standard English of the main, free indirect narration. I get the sense, in some of what I've read about her, that in many ways Scott positioned herself as a writer in opposition to the Southern Agrarian critics of her day (by the way, there is a connection here with the New Critics, such as Cleanth Brooks; more on this in another post, I hope), and thus, I gather, wished to break down the romantic Old South narrative dominant in her youth. I have little doubt, then, that she thought of herself as in sympathy with the former slaves, as well as with Native Americans. Nevertheless, some of this speech is difficult to read, as such rendered speech often is, regardless of the author's best intentions. Also, I probably don't need to tell you that the characters make liberal use of the word "nigger" (or, in the slaves' case, "niggah").
Of course this isn't any kind of review, and obviously there is a lot that could be said about any one of these issues, which I'm not going to delve into here. However, before closing I do want to leave you with some sense of the writing. This is towards the end of chapter one, Captain George is dying, and his wife Miss Sara has rung the bell for help, but everyone is out looking for Silas, the runaway slave (italics in original):
In the wake of my happy discovery of Scott and my fruitful reading of Escapade, I checked Migrations and The Wave out of the library with some excitement. Some of this excitement was dissipated upon opening the two volumes, both of which are historical novels of sorts and on first blush appear to be much more conventional than I'd hoped. But then they were both published, still, in the late 1920s, so what seems conventional now may not have been then. Migrations is the shorter of the two, by far, and is the earlier novel, so it was no contest which one I'd attempt to tackle first. In addition, Migrations is subtitled An Arabesque in Histories, which sounds much more interesting than narratives of the Civil War, the subtitle to The Wave. Having now read Migrations, I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, though I certainly enjoyed large portions of it.
"Arabesque" is one of those words I've always avoided looking up, preferring instead to just let it remain suggestive in its strangeness. (I think I first encountered it used by a writer describing the music of the Throwing Muses: "Zep arabesques" he wrote; the phrase seemed to capture something elusive about the band's music, though I really didn't know precisely what he meant. But I digress.) I did finally look it up and, with all apologies to Andrew Seal, it means, when applied to the fine arts, "a sinuous, spiraling, undulating, or serpentine line or linear motif." Here I'd say it means a more or less free indirect prose and stream of consciousness narrative, in the multiple-character Mrs. Dalloway sense (assuming my memory of Mrs. Dalloway is remotely accurate). A species of "pyschological realism". Only occasionally does it appear as if the third-person descriptions of the external world are not also reflected in the direct experience of a character but belong to an outside observer, one who objectively knows, and, indeed, the one occasion when a new character's back story is extensively filled in by a narrator's voice, it feels gratuitous.
The novel takes place in the 1850s and is divided into three chapters, each with several sub-divisions, with interrelated characters but no real plot or narrative arc uniting them other than the theme hinted at by the title. In chapters one and three, we're among slaveholders and slaves in Tennessee. Some of the slaveholders are ambivalent about owning slaves, though not usually for any discernible moral reasons; they all think they treat their slaves well. In both chapters, a slave runs away; in chapter three this leads to a confrontation between mob justice and a suspected abolitionist--who nevertheless owns slaves of his own--and his scandalously mixed-race ("quadroon") wife. Chapter two is considerably longer than the others and traces the journey to San Francisco (in the wake of the gold rush), by way of Jamaica and Panama, of a married couple who've left the town in Tennessee in search of better opportunities.
The book is interesting as a depiction of aspects of life in the antebellum South, but I admit that my attention occasionally flagged the closer it veered to reading like a semi-objective historical narrative, however unresolved. The characters are much concerned with the nature of their own existence, and Scott invests her female characters especially with rich, complicated inner lives, bound up in questions of class, gender, and race. We are also treated to the slaves' thoughts and inner struggles. Beyond The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I have no direct experience with fiction from this time or earlier that deals with slavery and slaves, so I can't say anything about how "progressive" this may or may not have been, but I thought it was worth noting. And it appears that Evelyn Scott aspired to be as "realistic" as possible, so she attempted to render the speech of the slaves in dialect, as well as that of poor whites, or other characters not of the slaveholding class predominant in the book. The language and thoughts of that class is, perhaps inevitably, the more or less standard English of the main, free indirect narration. I get the sense, in some of what I've read about her, that in many ways Scott positioned herself as a writer in opposition to the Southern Agrarian critics of her day (by the way, there is a connection here with the New Critics, such as Cleanth Brooks; more on this in another post, I hope), and thus, I gather, wished to break down the romantic Old South narrative dominant in her youth. I have little doubt, then, that she thought of herself as in sympathy with the former slaves, as well as with Native Americans. Nevertheless, some of this speech is difficult to read, as such rendered speech often is, regardless of the author's best intentions. Also, I probably don't need to tell you that the characters make liberal use of the word "nigger" (or, in the slaves' case, "niggah").
Of course this isn't any kind of review, and obviously there is a lot that could be said about any one of these issues, which I'm not going to delve into here. However, before closing I do want to leave you with some sense of the writing. This is towards the end of chapter one, Captain George is dying, and his wife Miss Sara has rung the bell for help, but everyone is out looking for Silas, the runaway slave (italics in original):
But the lane to the Quarters continued to open an abandoned perspective. Uncle Blossom did not move. Miss Sara was conscious of her ineffectualness, could almost see herself, her thin face under her crushed cap, her diminutive body, her wide sedate lady's petticoats, and her arms upreaching. Why had she not been born a man. Why had the men been sent away on other missions when the Captain was sinking and in a state like this. They should have come to her for their orders. What did anything matter but this--this last struggle against the--but was it inevitable. Her wrists slackened exhaustedly, and she half reclined herself against the long deal table upon which, in the morning, her precious bowls of milk were set out evenly for her to skim the cream from them.And this is from towards the end of the book. Bosh has also run away, but he hasn't made it very far. He's made it to the Gilbert property, where his mother is a slave and he basically gives up; she has hidden him away, tried and failed to get him to leave in advance of the inevitable mob justice (the mob is after him not only because he's escaped, but because he "attacked" a white women--really, he scared her; he was hungry and trying to get some food):
No one had heard her. Staring across the stripped stubble of the brownish tobacco fields, she began to weep silently, her mouth, penciled in its fine lines of age and pain, quivering, her bleared gaze reproaching the distances. Thomas and Edwin do not know. They can not know. A long life--all over--and what for. But there was no need for the 'what-for.' Living-being-alive--was sufficient. We require no explanation of it. In God we trust. A long life. Ah, how she hoped yet to live a long time.
"Dey's free whut the law sets free," she answered acidly. She was shaking as with palsy, and felt herself in danger of another nervous seizure such as she had experienced in the afternoon. In her flat ponderous countenance, her small eyes sparkled with that constant glitter of anger, aroused from the first instant in which Bosh had thrown insoluble responsibility upon her. She began to set the room to rights, rearranging her small belongings so that they might appear orderly. Some rush baskets and similar odds-and-ends, she stacked in a nook by the chimney, leaving, between the baskets and the wall, a space in which Bosh could, if necessary, secrete himself. The single unbleached sheet on the bed was smoothed out nearly, but she removed her fine quilt of many-colored patchwork and held it in readiness. Surely, as she listened, the tramp of strange men drew nearer.
[...] Ready to expire, she gave up her efforts to shift the bed. It was too late now, truly. Footsteps were indeed audible, and some, as yet, indistinguishable cries. "Snuff dat candle, Bosh," she whispered, but, anticipating his uselessness, did not wait on him. Rushing forward, she laid her broad palm upon the wick. The candle guttered, went out redolently, and, from beneath the door, sagging above an uneven sill, the flat moonlight gushed suddenly, in faint blue traceries. Save for the vivid relief of a spot on the floor just before the door, the room was pitch-black. Mammy Mary, her fists clenched and shaking, sank on her knees, half suppliant, half defiant with a desperation which she recognized as futile. In the night invisible, the sound of shouting voices grew always louder. She could not see Bosh, and only guessed that he was beside her.
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