Watching the Italian epic, “Best Of Youth”. Beautifully done and written. There’s metaphor and thought in every scene, yet it feels somehow unforced, except for the fact that everyone is much better looking than they have a right to be. The 2 brothers, the main characters, are reunited during the catastrophic floods in Firenze. All types chip in to save the books and the city. Can you imagine that here? Elliot G. and family just returned from NO working for Habitat for Humanity, but for the most part I can’t imagine the feeling that a city, its artifacts, are precious, important to humanity as a whole. And it’s hard to imagine acting on it en masse, bipartisan. Of course home and infrastructure is necessary for the folks who live there or are homeless. We might think of saving businesses and homes, schools and hospitals — but books? Maps and manuscripts? Artworks? Don’t we normally expect other agencies — FEMA, Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity or even insurance companies to step in and do the rescue and reconstruction job for us?
What towns here would be rescued not just for saving lives and property, but also for cultural patrimony? That thing that makes life worth living, as the Italians seemed to understand. Most U.S. towns are made of ephemeral buildings housing ephemeral institutions; we know they will be gone within our own lifetimes, and there is no sense of continuum. In New Orleans the continuum and deep unique roots are there, powerful — but they are not physical. There are social clubs and there is Preservation Hall and bars and lounges and Black Indian costumes — all of which are where that city’s culture was manifest, but in that town the culture was in the habits, cultural knowledge and attitudes of its people — and those, the ones who lived it, are dispersed.
Maybe it’s time. Maybe as Dickie Landry was quoted as saying, there is an upside in that the music and culture finally are more widely dispersed. They’ll influence, over time, Houston, Austin, Baton Rouge, and St. Louis, making each of those places a tiny bit funkier. That’s an awfully generous view and reaction to a city that was needlessly destroyed by willful negligence.
From When The Levees Broke: “Most people think that is was Katrina that brought about the destruction of New Orleans. But it was a breaching of the levees that put 80% of the city underwater. It wasn’t the hurricane.” — Spike Lee
The Best of Youth plot moves on to the Italian street riots and demonstrations in the 70s. I remember playing concerts in Italy in the late 70s. There would be rival promoters, one of whom would have the local politicians on his side, the other the youth — battle lines drawn, tear gas would be thrown on stage and in the dressing rooms. Audiences at that time felt that “music needed to be free”, and therefore they decided they should not pay to attend concerts. Barriers and fences were pushed down by mobs. (Woodstock too was made “free” after a couple of days.) Audiences with handkerchiefs and bandanas on their faces so their could stay and hear the music despite the choking sour smell of tear gas. Talking Heads was the first (international rock) act to play all over Italy since Frank Zappa who had toured the year before. In Italy it was a moment when politics, pop music, love, and sex all swirled around sucking everything into the vortex. Everything was vitally important. Things mattered — music mattered.
I sound like whining from a boomer, I know. Maybe the music was just a symbol, another flag to wave. It was a handy way to bring people together. I think it was also a symbol of international solidarity, that new ways of thinking were happening everywhere, and that music embodied possibility.
I wondered to Danielle if the crisis in the music industry was partly self-created. If, by catering to mass tastes, to the largest number of buyers possible, and therefore by trying to make music and movies that are palatable and may appeal to everyone, if the big companies haven’t created an audience that doesn’t give a shit, that has no allegiance, no loyalty to any particular artist or movie makers. This fickle audience can buy millions of CDs one year and then the next year buy nothing, no big deal. So the majors embark on a desperate search for singles, the bait that they believe will entice this careless crowd to buy records again. It becomes a vicious cycle, chasing this crowd, who by nature of their inevitably young age and the stuff that’s being fed them will be a temporary audience.
I’m talking about the mass audience, not the little piece of the human pie that will always be passionate about artists and whose work inspires them — and I’m not talking about those artists either — there are plenty of them. But the big percentage of sales is to an audience that wouldn’t miss the artist whose song they just bought if they never released another song or movie ever. Maybe it’s the same as it ever was, and I am idealizing, romanticizing, based on my own past. Everyone feels they (and others) were more passionate about music when they were younger. I am still passionate about many artists and bands, and I don’t think I have any disdain for genuinely popular music — I don’t think I’m a snob — but I don’t know if I harbor any illusions about pop music enlightening the world.
Free Will Part 1
A Times article on free will (does it exist or not?) used a lovely metaphor — that our conscious minds are like a monkey riding a tiger, who with powers of mind and reason, convinces himself that he is driving, is in control, when actually it is the massive tiger of the unconscious that will take little monkey for a ride. Here’s the illustration by Jonathon Rosen.
Our pal the Evildoer
Saddam Hussein is hung until his neck snapped. His trial was engineered by the Americans, at a human rights/war crimes court, which the Americans have created and so engineered such that no American can ever be tried. Justice for not quite all. It seems to be a court created expressly to punish the evildoers of choice — Saddam and Milosevic…not Pinochet or Kissinger, God forbid. To me the hanging was meant as a message — “look what happens when you mess with us” — but in Iraq it seems to be perceived as an in-your-face taunt by the Shiites against the Sunnis. In this way it aggravates the situation more than ever.
Was he killed because he’s an unpleasant reminder that he used to be a U.S. ally, that the U.S. created him and supported his wars, sold him arms, and looked the other way when he committed the crimes for which the U.S. is now punishing him?
Bush School Of Government
Holy shit! This is real! No doubt it’s just family money that prompted the name of the “school” at Texas A&M — home of the Aggies! The impression though is that the wisdom of the Bush clan will be imparted here to a new generation — if so, we are in deep deep shit. Drinking, snortin' and religious conversion are majors.
