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I’d been to Belfast twice before. Once for an art exhibit, and once to visit my cousin Maureen, who married a sheep farmer in a little town about at hour north of here. On one of those trips I visited Shankill Road and Falls Road — the Protestant and Catholic working class neighborhoods where tensions are high and there is plenty of evidence of the ongoing “Troubles.” On Falls Road, there are murals that align the situation of the Catholic minority with that of the Palestinians, African Americans (one mural featured a large image of Frederick Douglass!) and other oppressed groups worldwide. 
Further on, there are murals that present a Dungeons & Dragons version of Celtic pride and culture. 
A brief history, as I know it: the English formerly occupied all of Ireland — North and South — and made it official in 1801. The Irish island is primarily Catholic, and the English had converted to Protestantism in the 1500s. England first disowned Catholicism so that Henry VIII could get a divorce, and allow his heirs to hold on to the throne — these guys were about not much more than intermarriage and holding on to power. The convenient conversion didn’t take, though, and England retreated — but by the time Elizabeth I took over a few decades later, the reformation was nearly complete. The English didn’t love the Irish — they saw them mainly as a cheap source of labor and goods — and immigrants from the green isle were not all that welcome. It has been said that the famous potato famine was, if not engineered, then allowed to develop and flourish, thanks to the English. A little bit of Stalin in the British Isles. In the early part of the last century, some of the Irish began fighting for their independence. The clump of northern counties known as Ulster happened to contain a fair number of English settlers, and that area wanted to remain part of England. The Ulstermen smuggled guns in from Germany in 1914, making civil war across Ireland almost certain. After a long struggle in 1921, Ireland threw off British rule and became an independent nation — except for that Northern clump, which was held on to by England. Those counties had opposed Home Rule for Ireland all along, and Ulster also contained the formerly industrial city of Belfast — proud site of the Titanic’s construction. So, in 1921, like US Republicans drawing new zoning and voting districts in Texas to guarantee a Republican win in certain areas, the Ulstermen, with the help of the English, carved out an area of the North that was — surprise — mainly Protestant, and mainly Loyalist (loyal to the Crown). The Catholics, a majority in Ireland, were now, suddenly, a minority in that area — and therefore powerless. The writing was plainly on the wall: an unstable, untenable situation had been created, and it only took a small incident to set things off in a very bad way. The Troubles began in earnest in the 1960s with the IRA and others bombing and attacking what they perceived to be the British occupying force. Vigilante groups, aided by British military and police forces, worked violently to keep the cauldron bubbling. Since that time, there have been peace accords — though some bombs went off a few weeks ago. After decades of fear, death and destruction, neither side wants to return to those bad old days, but we’ll see — a new generation raised on hatred might not remember those days so well. Further up Falls Road there is a memorial for the IRA and the hunger strikers — among them Bobby Sands, the young man portrayed in the amazing recent movie Hunger. 
The Orangemen (the Protestants) have regularly attempted to goad and provoke the Catholics by marching in “religious processions” through contested neighborhoods at certain times of year. Like the school kids we saw hanging round these housing estates, they were all itching for a fight. The two neighborhoods are right next to one another — a stone’s throw apart — but, like Gaza and Israel, they are separated by a fence, a wall, barbed wire and a no man’s land. The last time I was here, passage between the neighborhoods was forbidden — in order to cross, you had to go back into Belfast and then out again by a different road to get from one adjacent neighborhood to another. Now there is a passage, though it is still locked up at night. I ran into L & M, and eventually we found the passage between the warring hoods. To the right was a small pedestrian gate that led through a no man’s land to the other hood. 
On the Shankill (Protestant) side, the murals have a completely different tone. Here the emphasis is on historical precedent — the English fighting the Catholic Irish for hundreds of years. One mural featured a quote by Oliver Cromwell from the 1600s, saying that there would never be peace in Ireland until the Catholic Church was crushed!: 
Other murals commemorate the dead Loyalists, and portray the Catholics as a band of pesky rebels and terrorists (which they are, regardless of whether you agree with their political position or not) — a constant thorn in the side of the “legal” government. In some ways the legality of the government here is hard to dispute — but its vibe and rhetoric smacks of the use of similar convoluted logic in other places, where the powers that be — the oppressors — portray themselves as the victims. The ones with all the guns, soldiers, power, politicians and courts somehow turn things around and claim to be the victims — uh huh. Heard that one from the US Religious Right, the US Republican right and the Israelis as well. 
Here is the mural that goes along with this explanation. 
Update:
I stand corrected. A reader of this blog, who knows the depths of Irish (and Scots) history better than I, delves further back into the "mists of time" than I even thought possible — 1000 years! Even still, it seems as though the Elizabethan Plantations were a way for the English to use Ireland as a new territory — and to transform that territory into a more lucrative place as well, with a new, capitalist-friendly populace and religion.
It's something of a Nationalist (Republican/Catholic etc.) credo that the 'Irish Nation' was/is some kind of cohesive unitary entity which can be traced back through the mists of time, and that the irritating Northern Protestants are somehow 'English' interlopers from afar with no real place on the island of Ireland.
Historical reality isn't quite so neat, however.
The original inhabitants of Ireland came from NW Spain in approximately 8000 BC; they moved and settled freely across the landbridge between NE Ireland and W Scotland. The Scots was the name given to precisely these settlers from NE Ireland.
Further waves of invasion and settlement saw successive groups becoming dominant, then integrated with the 'Irish' Celts, Vikings, Normans, English Plantations etc.
But the key historical rupture occurred with the Elizabethan Plantations, because two factors had completely different implications for subsequent Political, Cultural, Economic and Social development and relative under-development: 1) the sheer numbers involved, and the political and economic dislocation this entailed, and 2) the fact that they now came with a new and culturally different religion, and with economic and social practices which were part of the historical dynamics of early Capitalism as it was emerging in Britain itself.
This could not fail to create a 'differentness' about NE Ulster, even without the link to Britain and the English Crown.
This is something which a nationalist analysis completely fails to come to terms with, notwithstanding the further awkward point that these 'Scots' would have been returning to precisely those ancestral lands from where the original 'scots' had first crossed to settle in Scotland — as evidenced by shared surnames and common linguistic structures which persist to the present day. Even today, the dominant blood groups and ethnic characteristics in Ireland come from the original pre-Celtic settlers from Iberia, and not from the many subsequent waves. But perhaps of even greater discomfort to the cosy nationalist notion that somehow the Protestants don't belong is the fact that these pre-Celtic characteristics are most dominant in the northern part of Ireland, amongst the Protestants and Catholics who live there.
Well, enough of potted histories — suffice it to say that all is not quite as straightforward as a simple green nationalist perspective might have you believe!
- Alan McLaughlin
Highway Robbery In an interview with The New York Times, Eminem reveals he rides a bike. See you on the streets of Detroit in a few days, Marshall. We have a day off here in the Land of Cleve, so a group of us hailed 2 taxis to take us to a movie theater in Shaker Heights to see W. I ride shotgun and when we tell the driver we’re going to see a movie, he volunteers that the last movie he saw was Last Tango In Paris. Hmmm. We ask the driver for his number so we can call him for a drive back and he hands me a card, saying, “This is MY number.” We arrive and the fare is a little over $18, so I pull out my per diems from my pants pocket and give him $100 and two singles and ask him for $80 in change. He takes just the 100-dollar bill and puts it near his crotch and begins to fumble with his change purse. After a bit of this, I remind him that he doesn’t have to make change — just give me $80. He then says to me that I never gave him the $100. I say I did, and he points to the remains of my per diem in my other hand and says, “There’s your hundred right there, this one is mine.” I say, “No, I definitely gave you the $100.” He repeats, “That’s your hundred in your other hand.” Oh, man. This goes back and forth a couple of more times and soon Ray and Kaïssa in the back seat both say, “We saw him give you the $100,” which gives me the assurance to keep pressing. If it were just me in the car, I might have started to doubt myself at this point…which is how these scams work. I say calmly to the driver, “Don’t do this, don’t go there,” but he keeps at it. A couple more calm exchanges, and then I snap. I start screaming at the top of my lungs at this guy, and remind him that “I’ve got your number in my back pocket and if you don’t fucking give me the money, I’ll call the cops, right now.” I have my hand on the door handle. He still hesitates and I continue to scream at him, “Alright, I’m calling the cops, you fucker.” I begin to open my door. He hands over the money and I give him a 20, plus a 2-dollar tip. Why in the world did I tip this guy? His initials on his card are R.A.S. and the phone number is 216-440-8568. My adrenaline is now sky high and Kaïssa and Ray help calm me down as we wait for the others to arrive; THEIR cab driver got lost! And this is not an obscure place, but a major intersection with shops all around. The next day in the afternoon, I ride out to a camera store to replace a lost charger. I go east on Euclid Avenue, one of the main drags of Cleveland. Or what used to be the main shopping street. For about a mile, I pass building after building, boarded up, abandoned or empty. Beautiful buildings too, with lots of character. It seems like this was, not too long ago, the main shopping street — a bustling area filled with folks buying and selling. Big department stores and offices. Some of these buildings are in the midst of renovation; their facades partially ripped off, scaffolding here and there, but the work seems to have stopped midway, for lack of funds I suspect. And given the economic earthquakes of the last few weeks, they’ll stay that way for a while. One boarded up building houses a child care center on the ground floor; another — this one not boarded up — is a center for monitoring child support. Ads on the bus stops remind young men that dads are important. It’s all too easy to connect the dots in the scenario painted by these institutions, or lack of institutions. One passes block after block of empty buildings and shops and asks, “How was it allowed to get this far?” Granted, lots of towns still have vibrant centers, and parts of Cleveland are still active — the clubs in the warehouse district and the fancier suburbs like Shaker Heights. But when encountering a place like Euclid Avenue, one thinks of the Mayan temples that were already being abandoned before Cortés even arrived. 
What kind of people lived here? What did they make? Why did they leave?
This was always a factory town, full of immigrants, mostly from all over Europe. Poles and Greeks, Italians and Ukrainians. The lovely greenway I biked, along Martin Luther King Boulevard from the art museum to the lake, was dotted with statues and terraces commemorating each immigrant group. The Azerbaijanis pulled out all the stops. So, while Chicago may have the Anish Kapoor Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, Cleveland has this: 
There’s an inscription nearby, just in case you don’t get the point, which says, “Azerbaijan, land of eternal fire, ignites the imagination, warms the spirit and kindles the soul.” The sons and daughters of these immigrants made for a legendary Rock and Roll audience in this town. Hard workers and hard partiers. They lay claim to the first Rock and Roll radio show and Allen Freed claims to have coined the phrase, though I suspect a “race” record used it way before that. So, there is some justification for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum being located here. Hard to bottle the manic release associated with that music and its audiences and the loopy creativity of the forerunners of self-made popular music in a respectful museum setting. Hard bordering on impossible. Like most of these places, the organizers kind of throw up their hands and end up exhibiting a bunch of outfits and artifacts — my old big suit being one of them. I was tipped via an e-mail sent by a man named Tim Rossiter to my office. Tim wrote: “I've got to tell you about a special Cleveland treasure, Glenn Schwartz. Glenn started the James Gang in the 60s, then moved to California and was in the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. He flipped out soon afterward and was in religious communities. He's had a rough life and is tortured and crazy…Now Glenn is 67 years old and plays in a blues trio for free late every Thursday at a small bar called Major Hooples. There are typically 20-30 people there and he is jaw-droppingly amazing to see. His playing is like electric bolts straight from his psyche. He jumps off his amp and plays guitar with his teeth. And he often preaches fire and brimstone between songs. It's something very special and you won't see anything like it except on Thursdays in Cleveland.” Well, Tim didn’t exaggerate. The place was a low-key little dive and at one end, not even on a stage, was Glenn, his brother and a drummer, all playing at full volume. Sure enough, between amazing and inventive Hendrix-like solos, he would admonish the audience and prophesize “blood on the moon and War in America.” He may have lost his mind but his fingers are firing on all cylinders. The bartender told Natalie that if you wanted him to stop playing you just had to dance. Well, see for yourself. Apologies for the mostly lousy sound quality; Glenn’s playing deserves better, but you’ll get the idea. As Tim said, only in Cleveland.
[Link to video]
I saw Errol Morris’s film Standard Operating Procedure, the “documentary” about the Abu Ghraib photos. I have the term documentary in quotes because, as the interviewees describe past events, the film re-enacts scenarios not filmed or photographed at the time. For some, these re-enactments are a problem, as documentary convention prescribes a style and logic that, in most cases, simulates truth telling and objectivity. Many assume that in documentaries, the camera is a mute witness to “facts” and “events” and any interference or fictional techniques or touches destroys this, well, myth.
The re-enactments do not adhere to the form typical of those criminal investigation TV shows, which recreate the crime scenes with actors, out of focus, slow-motion shots, and voiceover narration. Instead, Morris employs fragmentary images: a close up of snarling dog, its teeth lunging at the camera; a close up of skin covered in swarming ants; and most expensive, a helicopter exploding above our heads, the flaming parts descending on the camera.
It should be obvious that all documentary filmmakers have an agenda they hope to put forward. I’m not talking about Michael Moore and Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, The Smartest Guys in the Room) who obviously have a polemic to deliver, but about the countless docs, TV shows, news reports and educational pieces that evince a style that says, “We don’t have a point of view. We’re simply recording what’s in front of the camera and you make up your own mind.”
These ostensibly objective works invoke specific filmic devices that audiences have come to accept and recognize as indicators of truth telling and impartiality. Upon examining these “unbiased” films, we may sense their deep, inherent agendas, but for the most part, the style masks the filmmakers’ underlying prejudices, and we buy into it.
In a sense then, fiction films are also just recording what’s in front of the camera, but in their case, it happens to be costumed actors staging events. Fiction films are documentaries of the performances of actors.
Next, I watched Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA, an incredible, award-winning documentary about a violent mine strike in Kentucky. It took her four years to make the film, which she originally intended to be about something related, though different. It’s obvious that Kopple was embedded with the miners. During some particularly violent confrontations, the camera is clearly on the “side” of the striking miners, as scabs and corporate toadies take shots at them. The filmmaker hung with the mining families and otherworldly community in these hollers in order to secure some of the intimate details. Upon release, the film was an exposé, drawing attention to lives and injustices that otherwise would have been ignored.
Likewise, as Errol Morris and some of his interviewees point out, the photos taken at Abu Ghraib are responsible for drawing attention to the prison’s systemic practice of abuse. Had these photos never surfaced, the whole situation would have been swept under the rug, as was the violent, habitual torture practiced by the CIA and MI, never photographed. Since these practices can’t be proven, most media outlets pretty much ignore them. To paraphrase one of the film’s talking heads: ‘These photos made the President of the United States have to apologize to the world, so someone was going to pay.’ Unsaid, although implicit, is that those who caused the embarrassment to Bush would pay over those responsible for setting up a situation where abusive behaviors were condoned and encouraged.
Morris doesn’t broach the “Chain of Command” issues Seymour Hersh examines in his book of the same title. Hersh carefully traces the legal maneuvers of Gonzales and the policies of the Rumsfeld-Cheney-Bush tripartite, effectively encouraging and excusing torture and anything goes behavior.
The film details the fascinating use of forensics to establish accurate information about the photographs. Metadata embedded within the digital images is extracted and cross-referenced to handwritten logs to recreate a timeline, and uncover who took the pictures and with what camera. Morris limits the focus to the Americans, not the Iraqis. Some interviewees have the look of those whose experiences have twisted and mangled their souls deeply. They seem haunted and possessed. Especially the young women, former innocents who, like characters out of some horror movie, were fucked over by some invisible, monstrous entity.
So maybe the film is not a documentary in the accepted sense, or maybe we must realize that docs are not exactly what they appear to be. At any rate, by examining a set of infamous photos, how they came to be, who authored them, and how they survived, Morris creates a meditation on the meaning and reception of images—particularly news images—in our culture at large.
As these photos are reexamined, one can’t help but wonder whether a people often rounded up, imprisoned and tortured for no reason—many prisoners are simple cab drivers and local shopkeepers—will keep their grudges and desire for revenge close. And of course, one wonders whether a terrible price will be paid somewhere down the line. George Bush might be dead by then, Cheney will surely be gone soon—he’s running on watch batteries as it is—but some naïve and “innocent” generation will pay for our current government’s policies and actions and wonder, “What did I do to deserve this?”
Went to see “Transformers” last night by Times Square (there are hardly any places to lock one’s bike on 42nd st). It was long, for a CG based action flick. 2 and 1⁄2 hours I think. I realized today, per my earlier post re video games, movies and emotional involvement that video games could achieve what this and a few other recent blockbusters do without too much further development. Add some amusing quips and asides based on “character” and behavior patterns, scattered them here and there, ditto base the actions and gestures on “character”, maybe insert a love (or a pinup, in this case) interest — and then let the fights, battles, puzzle solving and chases commence — the McGuffin, whatever it is, leads one, as it does in video games, to the conclusion of the movie, or the game. The path could vary somewhat, but by clever design one could somehow always return to the main plot thread. One leaves the cinema drained, but energized — one imagines 42nd street (in my case) rocked by alien monsters, fighter jets, tanks and girls in halter-tops. Then, 1⁄2 hour later, the adrenaline rush has worn off, and that’s it. There’s no more of a take home than there is in a video game. When movies aspire to be video games — although on larger screens — they’ve given up already.
I realized that in these movies the military and the government ministries that are involved with them are often portrayed in a flattering light — the military, despite their initial difficulties and surprise, are fairly competent in these movies — there isn’t any evidence of careerist backstabbing, politicking, ideologically based decision making and lame excuses. Granted, those are mostly the arenas of our political leaders, but lately, since the military have been slow to stand up to them, they’ve been infected as well.
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.
Thoughts while watching Fernando Trueba’s documentary El Milagro de Candeal on the Candeal neighborhood in Salvador, Bahia, where Carlinhos Brown led a transformation effort. It’s the neighborhood and Afro-Bahian culture viewed through the eyes of a Trueba favorite — Bebo Valdés, the Cuban pianist who won numerous awards for his recent recordings on Trueba’s Spanish record label.
The links between Afro-Cuban music and culture and Afro-Brazilian culture are many. The religious roots are similar — Shango, Oxum, Oxala, Yemanja are all worshipped in both countries, with some variation. Musically, rhythmically, the son and the samba are, for example, quite different, but the way the music is organized is very similar, so there is a lot of jamming together in the film.
John Cage goes Funky
Here (above) either Bebo or Brown comments on the rhythmic clickety-clack and thrum as they cross a bridge in the rural town of Cachoeira.
Carnival and musical groups are seen filling the streets. There are connections here with the “saints”, too — the Afro-Atlantic gods and goddesses. One senses, just watching a street procession, a kind of openness, a generosity, an embrace of the universe.
When I was there shooting my own little documentary I felt this non-judgmental religion and ethos, which is maybe something many have sensed in Buddhism and other eastern philosophies, but here it is funky, sexy…and loud!
Maybe here is a god (or Gods) without God. A prayer to that which is greater than ourselves.
O mia Pae (oh, my father) sings a vocal group in a church built by slaves. But it’s not necessarily the Christian God they are singing to — though he’s welcome to join in as well.
A song to the mystery, to that which is beyond out comprehension, and biologically will ever be thus — I suspect that our brains are not built for understanding everything, evolutionarily it’s not necessary.
And there is acceptance that there are things we will never understand. Many call it God, but I prefer Mystery. It could be called “father”, in the sense that nameless ethereal whirligigs made us, begat us, formed us and the world, but that is a metaphor — it is certainly not necessarily a literal male, a man with a long white beard. Another common metaphor is Mother, and often Africa is invoked as the mother of us all — our evolutionary mother and spiritual mother. That’s where we all came from and that’s where what we are was established.
Musically, here is Africa in Spain, in Brasil, in North America, in Cuba — the roots of RnB, samba, rhumba, son, funk, rock and roll, swing, hip hop, humor, language, cool, digital culture — improvisation and innovation.
Here is Brown’s Mae de Santo (mother of the saints) and mentor, Dona Angelina, as she goes into a trance following Brown testifying to what she and the saints have done for him and the community.
The mysterious may be things we suss the mechanism of, the parts and the mechanics, but which still remain marvelous in their existence.
The awesome power of the sea, of the air, wind, of the earth below us, of ourselves — even of those psychological forces we acknowledge, whose mechanics we sort of think we understand, but whose manifestations are, and remain, like water and air, like a bird or a tiger — somehow still beyond our deep comprehension….and certainly beyond our control. Drugs, therapy and surgery may throw up roadblocks and signposts — but we’re never really in control, like the Gnarls Barkley song says.
Here are Brown, Bebo and Marisa Monte singing together. What does this have to do with the rebirth of a neighborhood? Maybe everything.
Malu and I watched the V for Vendetta DVD. How did this get made? To me, it’s a pointed and direct critique of the present U.S. government — with the “Strength Through Unity” posters substituted for “United We Stand”. (It was written during the Thatcher/Reagan years, but seems like it’s been updated — I haven’t read the comic.)
The Wachowski Bros. is the answer, I guess — it was a long standing project of theirs, since even before the Matrix movies, so the making-of featurette says. My guess is that they did some sort of quid pro quo deal, trading the Matrix sequels for a green light on this one.
Anyway — secret prisons, politicized religion and symbols, militarism, accusations of insufficient patriotism and terrorism. One of the lead characters is a terrorist, though they are careful that he doesn’t slaughter civilians — it all seems scarily prescient, especially the attitude, which isn’t gung ho, smash the “terrorist”, but rather smash the corrupt secretive lying government. The “terrorist” quotes Jefferson and Shakespeare and wears a mask throughout, making his acting task near impossible, and also making it somewhat frustrating for the audience. Like the 1st Matrix movie — a treatise wrapped in a heavily art-directed thriller.
Conversion via e-mail between an old friend and myself: Friend: Just got back from X where a relative now lives. It was in many ways like the perfect town — super liberal, nice old Craftsman homes on cozy, tree-lined streets; friendly people; no one locks their front door; the stores are locally owned (no chains); free movies in the park; free outdoor concerts where kiosks sell Thai food or locally-made ice cream made with local ingredients; there's communal compost; a massive farmer's market; the health food store is huge and carries mostly local, organic food (not Horizon or big pseudo-organic companies); gorgeous scenery — really the closest thing to a utopian society that I’ve experienced. But there was an essential ingredient missing that made it seem kind of boring to me. It was the whitest place I've ever been. I was on the lookout for people of color and didn't see a single African American person in 5 days. (There were a couple of Native Americans and a few Asians, but that was it. Certainly not enough for an influence to be felt.) Heaven is indeed a dull, one-dimensional place. The locals we met were very happy there but made comments about how the town was a little too perfect, that there was something eerie about it — but I wondered whether they would actively want economic and ethnic diversity and the complex and challenging issues that go with it? I couldn’t help thinking that these people live in a bubble, that they're missing out, that it's sort of unhealthy or just plain wrong in today's multi-culti world. Maybe I’m acutely aware of this because we live in the most economically and ethnically diverse part of our area where the whites may complain about crime, but the multi-cultural aspect makes it anything but boring.
Me: Hmmm, paradise is boring, eh? Well, I guess it would be. Maybe we need difference, the unexpected, the not perfect and even the undesirable to keep our edges as beings and as a species? We sharpen and hone ourselves against the nasty old world, and we become who we are as a result. You buying any of this? We need something to push against, some resistance and some reminders that we can’t just coast — some tests, surprises, practice, uncertainty and even unpleasantness to make us ask ourselves constantly who we are, what do we want, where are we going and do we really want to go there?
Or maybe I’m simply justifying the [somewhat bumpy] life I lead? [NY is more suited for the wealthy now, but it is still a place where ambitious creative types struggle against the odds in tiny apartments and with not quite enough money.] Maybe I’m secretly jealous of your relative and others who have made a place that eliminates all the bad stuff. (And the “other”, as you say.)
Friend: I totally buy what you say. In my opinion, we do need the nasty stuff — the struggle and resistance give life purpose. How can you strive to achieve if you're already there? Can art and great ideas flourish in a stagnant environment? I think about things like The World cruise ship where millionaires live year round — is it the perfect existence or total hell?
Anyway, I like what you say about surprises, unpleasantness and uncertainty as motivation — little kicks in the butt. No fun, but perhaps necessary.
Daniel (a journal reader) wrote in the following: When the Bass brothers financed the first Biosphere, that earth in a bubble out in Arizona, the trees all failed in an interesting way. All the trees in the biosphere were droopy and lacked the strength to stand upright. They grew, but were too weak to stand. They studied the problem and found the answer. No wind. The Biosphere bubble lacked any wind so the trees had nothing to make them sway. It was the swaying, pushing against an invisible yet very palpable force, that gave them the strength to grow upright, stand reaching up to the sky. I met one of the Bass brothers at an American Museum Association show and he took me to a Blues club that he owned in Fort Worth. The band was rocking and he was so down home I forgot all about the Biosphere so I never got to ask if the story was true.
…
A religious procession on 9th ave in the 50s yesterday (phone picture):
The brass behind had a novel way of keeping their music in front of them:
Saw a screening of a documentary called Jesus Camp. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears.  Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)
Awareness of the rest of the world is curtailed — one can only view or read that which agrees with the agenda.
Naturally, the kids being so young, there is no questioning of any kind — they simply accept what grownups Fischer and the others say — they get pumped up, agitated, they memorize right wing and Jesus slogans and shout them back obediently. They become part of a support group — a warm, safe, comfortable feeling for anyone, for any social animal, for you and me. No one strays or gets out of line even the slightest bit. (More on peer pressure later.)
There were some perfect sound bites — at one point Pastor Fischer instructs the little ones that they should be willing to die for Christ, and the little ones obediently agree. She may even use the word martyr, which has a shocking echo in the Middle East. I can see future suicide bombers for Jesus — the next step will be learning to fly planes into buildings. Of course, the grownups would say, “Oh no, we’re not like them” — but they admit that the principal difference is simply that “We’re right.”
In another scene a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, with his trademark smirking smile, is brought out and the children are urged to identify — many of the little ones come forward and reverently touch his cardboard hands.
I kept saying to myself, “O.K., these are the Christian version of the Madrassas (those Islamic religious instructional schools in Pakistan and elsewhere, often financed by Saudi oil money)...so both sides are pretty much equally sick, there’s a balance." (Although it must be said the Madrassas provide some regular education and literacy where no other option is available, they do community work that is non-religious...and they take in aimless troubled youth.)
They want to turn the U.S. into the "Christian" version of Iran or Saudi Arabia. A theocracy. The separation between church and state, already shaky with Bush in charge, is under full frontal assault by this bunch — and they are well organized, too. The megachurches tell their parishioners who to vote for, what judges to support, letters to write, and where they should stand on the issues. Well, we all do this to some extent — even in casual chats with friends we attempt to deduce and arrive at a consensus of opinion; a sloppy democratic give-and-take on any number of subjects often gives way to agreement. But this is top-down messaging — no discussion allowed. There’s a scene in the Colorado Springs megachurch run by the Preacher who talks with Bush once a week — same deal as with the kids, only most of the attendees are pliant adults.
What is it about Colorado Springs? Littleton is right next door to these megachurches. I think they are 2 sides to the same coin. One breeds the other. The dissatisfaction and alienation that leads folks to join this weird non-“Christian” Christianity (much the same has been said about fundamentalist Islamic groups, that they are a perversion of the Islam of the Prophet) leads down a road to both Littleton and Colorado Springs — and in the sense that they allow the mind to be pleasantly emptied, they are identical.
The documentary juxtaposes scenes of an Air America radio call-in guy, a former preacher himself — who rants against this version of Christianity. These scenes seemed almost unnecessary, as to many of us in the audience Becky was pretty much indicting herself, though she wouldn’t see it that way. But they did give some relief from the scary view of the heartland as harboring an army in formation. Zombies from the wheat fields.
Sad, as the heartland and areas untouched by the big city sicknesses are also the home of much practical down-to-earth wisdom. Wisdom borne of the land and of experience, unsullied by the trendy political and ethical philosophies that periodically sweep the urban jungles.
When one sees religion perverted — in the U.S. or in Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan or India, one wonders if the spiritual seeds, planted by visionaries and enlightened prophets like Jesus, Mohammed, Marx and others, are just too volatile for large societies to deal with. One asks if religious visions are better off kept as a personal thing, or at least confined to a small group — otherwise the death and destruction sown by and in the name of religions more or less balances out their moral and personal virtues (which are many.)
It’s official, what’s going on Iraq is a civil war.
Malu and I went to see A Scanner Darkly. I tried to untangle the plot for her afterwards — an almost hopeless task, but I suspect that all the plot twists are actually followable — I simply missed a jump or two. I also guessed that the dedications from Dick at the end, just before the credits, were a list of his friends and acquaintances who had died or been permanently damaged by drugs in the late 60s and early 70s. We agreed that the rotoscoped animation was the perfect medium for this story and that Woody Harrelson and Robert Downey Jr. were great. At times I was reminded of The Strangerhood, the machinima made from The Sims game characters — also a bunch of existentially lost stoners who can’t figure out who or where they are.
There are lovely visual metaphors — the scramble suits as the façades one wears at work, the view of Keanu Reeves's baffled face — his “real self” — inside a suit, trying to sort his life out. Spying on oneself as a metaphor for consciousness and the two halves of the brain at war with each other.
Denote refers to the literal thing. If one screams “fuck” when one makes a mistake is one denoting rough sexual intercourse? Not likely. To connote is to refer to qualities implied or suggested by that thing, but not the thing itself. In trying to apply the above example I am therefore lost — obviously we often use the F word solely for emphasis…as far as I know when one says, “that’s a big fucking tree” one does not imagine the tree engaged in sexual intercourse. So how did “qualities implied or suggested” by sexual intercourse become an intensifier, how did a word for sex become a word for adding emphasis?
Parallels
Here are some frames from Blind Spot — Hitler’s Secretary, that is pretty much one long contemporary interview with that woman. It is a wonderful example of how we humans can deceive ourselves, delude ourselves and blinker ourselves.
Now, of course, she realizes what she had willed herself not to see or admit, just as now many people (many less than previously) refuse to admit what the Bush admin is doing because the politicians and others push their buttons with words or national security, terrorists, democracy, small government…
Our ability to live in denial and hide from facts in front of our faces is obvious. I am thinking that it must have evolved out of a survival mechanism — some mental ability that helps one focus on the hunt, on courtship, on our children and on other ancient behaviors that are essential and absolutely necessary…necessary at the time that they are needed.
The fact that demagogues, advertisers, marketing experts and religious leaders have learned to tap into these powerful instincts is unfortunate, but maybe inevitable. In fact, since it is natural that we have these abilities, maybe it is also natural that they will be exploited and that some will become skilled at this exploitation.
However, as powerful and irresistible as these buzzwords are, it is possible to resist them and be aware when they are being employed — employed for better or worse. And then to make a decision whether one wants to be manipulated or self-deluded, or not. There are times when a certain amount of self delusion is “good”, when it allows us to accomplish a necessary task, create something unlikely or new, or even speak out — and in those cases it might be deemed worthy.
E.B. White, Death and Hope
Read E.B. White’s skinny little book This Is New York. It was written in 1948 as an assignment for Holiday magazine — I’m not sure travel and leisure mags would accept a piece like this these days — it concludes with some very prescient meditations on death and war.
When he wrote this piece, a few years after WWII, the UN building was either just completed or was being built. He points out that after that war all cities, New York being a prime example, were opportunities for massive carnage and destruction on a scale not hitherto imagined:
"A single flight of planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal passages, cremate the millions."
Cities once were secure refuges for people — whether walled like the Medieval ones or not — they were places where people met, haggled and were to a degree protected. Now, with the atomic bomb especially, the protection part has been turned upside down.
But he notes that just as this shadow begins to loom over great mixtures of humanity like New York, an institution, the UN, rises to attempt to put an end to this threat. Death and hope, simultaneously, as always.
That the U.S. has clearly and brazenly taken an anti-UN stance in recent years — failed to pay their bills and has acted in defiance of UN resolutions and principles is a bad sign. The U.S. are not the only ones to have done so, but being the biggest kid on the block, it’s the most obvious, visible and ominous. It sends a sign to all the other kids that this kind of behavior is OK. A sign that death is sometimes more powerful than hope, temporarily. The UN is far from perfect — self interested parties and nations skew its abilities to perform its mission, its members are human — but the fact that that a little ray of hope still exists and it is unavailable to corporate lobbyists, religious demagogues and crooked election rigging is something.
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