On Public Discourse, Moral Re-examination, Offended Sensibilities, Court Rulings and Emblems of the Confederacy in Leesburg, Va

As Americans, as a Nation, we stand unified in our belief that each and all have the right to express their opinions proudly and openly, especially when doing so opens heretofore obscured pathways to a deeper understanding of our collective humanity during broad discourses such as these; vigorously reassessing an ever progressing and changing identity.

As a Democracy, we ideally look toward and rely upon a majority representation of our majority personality. There are many compelling forces in this broad “heritage” argument. I hear confidence and resolve from folks holding nearly sacred the recognition of those (especially our ancestors) who “died for their beliefs”.

As a native Virginian (Fredericksburg, Northern Virginia and until recently Leesburg) I'm proud of our multi-faceted history--rife with admirable and remarkable personalities manifest in myriad trajectories, often times in contradictory fashion. That any may have died "standing for something" doesn't automatically meet my personal standards for veneration. History is rife and rancid with all sorts of agents displaying hideous conviction.

Leesburg has indeed and repeatedly been a bed of revolutionary passion. Loudoun County earned the colloquial status of “Breadbasket of the Revolution” for its formidable agricultural support of the Continental Army as it feverishly fought to extricate its citizens from the demeaning and crippling clutches of a far-away tyrannical regime.

The colonies—united—won that war to become thereafter, in fits and starts, an officially independent and sovereign nation. For months, years, decades and centuries we proceeded as a young society navigating, negotiating a brighter, fairer and ever more promising future for each and all. Relative to other "great” nations of the globe, we today still remain a relatively young one. Many other nations have existed for far longer, though we seldom acknowledge or give a glimpse of any appreciation for their lessons learned throughout their longer ages. 

No one can accurately predict when one established era's characteristic practices, social mores and moral standards will seemingly—suddenly—tumult into another with its laws, practices and traditions slightly but more effectively reasonable, rational, righteous, enlightened and otherwise evolved.

The "War Between the States” was a bloody and divisive conflagration, when certain States within our unified nation attempted secession from  the majority collective thus allowing themselves to adhere only to their own codes and economic methods, one of which is now clearly recognized as a cruel, demoralized practice, that of keeping and utilizing human beings as livestock.

It is fact that many of our honored “forefathers” were slave owners, but during all that while an ever flowing enlightenment was by degrees reaching many enough shores to gradually become a mainstream. Those cultures—multiple generations of them—slowly gave way to change much as a frightened uprooted child slowly learns that a new home can be better, even while holding the memory of the old home near.

Of course, acceptance moves and grows by degrees as well. It requires dialogue both external and internal.

Recently, in the wake of "rulings" (we've been inoculated to steel ourselves as a reaction to that word) it’s irrefutable that this slow conversion is requiring this conversation, even within the considered climate of many a jarred sensibility. Perhaps we’ve evolved farther to a point where all of these opinions, reactions and detractions can be civil (writ large), constructive, non-violent (literally and literately) and made (and heard!) with patiently open minds and compassionately open hearts. We are compelled to examine ourselves as private and public entities and we do so privately and publicly.

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld recently stated (perhaps within another context, perhaps not) that "pain (like stubbing your toe on the edge of furniture in the dark) is just knowledge rushing in to fill a gap in knowledge. That pain you feel is a lot of information rushing in really quickly." In that sense, intransigence is our enemy, both as an end result and as a practice fostering more unpleasantness along the stubborn way.

As a somewhat unified Nation we won the Revolutionary War, only to later relent and lament to the divided begrudging struggle of civil war--a long-fought ugly conflict whose legacy, by virtue of its origins of regional solipsism and nationalistic self-loathing, is one of which many an American are understandably not proud.

But we ever too gradually manage to progress. Whether they be flags, statues or lofty hoisted monuments of the heart and mind, we fondly cradle these emblems as commemorations of a survived history although some of their ultimate stigma bears out as perverted vestiges of passed times and archaic cultures. 

On the one hand, we feel strongly that the Confederate facet of our region’s identity should be recognized and taught. On the other, its arguably most salient historical mantle is human slavery--universally deplored. Any nod to icons standing for this cause of the Confederacy risks being perceived as approval, perhaps celebration more than commemoration.

We should know to cede to the reality that the African American diaspora in this country have a unique history among all others. It is a legacy that continues in the face of continued transformation throughout these subsequent generations and needs to be learned more eagerly by those suffering from the inoculated predispositions instilled by a foundationally Euro-White ruling class. 

Generally I find it rude to question and argue others' clearly or vaguely articulated reasons for  offended to most anything. The sensibilities of our fellow Americans and Leesburg/Loudoun citizens (especially our brothers and sisters of African ancestry) should be of paramount importance and of utmost consideration in these Confederate monuments debates.

 Even still, many perceive these complaints as a weak-kneed chorus of politically correct whiners and "snowflakes".

At this point in the legislative debate it's encouraging to foresee the moment when we may allow the cognitive dissonance to flow like a robust and widely drinkable wine. In vino veritas. Let's learn and make some long needed adjustments.

Logan 3.12.15

Logan 3.12.15

Lithe, Lean, Slender
Nearly skinny
Minder rubber ‘round her wrist
Tine-like fingers quickly
Get to a banana
One, two, three strips divvy down
Disappear into rapid devour
All business

Sip, chew, sip
Paper cup not managing
Only but a peel
Where to conceal, the heel of a shoe?
Out of place, too small a space
Drape a perfect arch across the leather brief

Diamond ring, headlight lit
Promise just past the knuckle
Fiddle the wrapper of a breakfast bar
Barely two bites, she’s fed
Put it in the peel, on her case
At her feet

Perhaps this Spring she’ll stand
Speak vows and her words will float
On a haze of heartfelt devotion
He’ll think for a while
That she looks too thin
They'll sort that out 
Like trash in a cup

Which attendant scoops and whisks away
Leaving her perfect nails 
To start sifting through
Emblems and wee bits news on a wee screen
Back to my book, all business
And we’re all up and off to Miami

                                                                                     ~JC

The Carnage of Capitalism (with Comment)

THE CARNAGE OF CAPITALISM (click for Article)

Comment:

Stephen Kinzer's ("The Brothers") rather unsettling account of precedent setting patterns and policies established during and following World Wars 1 & 2 after several unabashed decades of corporate/government unholy allied practices in the name of "healthy commerce at all costs" accurately conveys how that dynamic paradigm was formulated, developed, implemented and yes, 'fostered' with post-war policies beginning with the Dulles brothers (Allen Foster and John Foster) and their dealings while in and out of the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell and on into their positions as Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively.

While much of their verified cronyism and back-room/insider dealing would be abjectly unlawful within many of today's revised legal parameters, they nevertheless set the tone of monied exceptionalism into the 30's, 40's and 50's and for decades to come.

Subsequently, in the late 70's and 80's when global finance, currency trading, bundled debt, leveraged stocks etc. became their own lucratively nascent and nepotistic industry--but one without any real manufactured product other than increased (or squandered) wealth itself--the proverbial mule was let kicking and sprinting out of the proverbial barn. The wild beast has begotten generations of legions which will be extremely difficult to discourage, round up or recall.

This manipulated wealth has become a colossal engine which drives everything from national elections to the mega-industries of medicine, education, correctional facilities (many now corporate run), bundled corporate run HOAs (existing nowhere near the neighborhoods of their concern) big pharma and its R&D, food, energy, resource policies, FOREIGN policy and operates hand in hand within a new normal that brazenly ignores--in fact proactively embarks upon the dismantling of--any codified humane consideration for our common welfare.

Other than vapid and hyperbolic image hawking for the benefit of consumer market eyes and ears, there seems to be little corporate recognition of future consequences or real regard for the imminent and irreversible environmental damage about to be forever leveled upon our planet. That we still must tolerate climate change deniers while the tipping points toward catastrophic events are becoming alarmingly nearer than ever anticipated is truly disturbing. It all but ensures with abrupt seriousness that these events must indeed come to occur before those voices that tout their mythic nature are considered ridiculous enough to be muted, and coordinated efforts shall become crucial for survival in the face of undeniably vivid developments. We shall scramble as best a threatened and terrified species is able.

Along with an ever increasingly smaller and insulated power peak, the classic democratic process is hobbled, evidenced strongly by the recent identity crisis within the Right's conservative big tent, as well as the recent inefficiency of the Left's no longer potent moral high ground. The hopes, dreams and plans of the common citizen are rendered adrift and at the mercy of the unmerciful with any plausible representation frozen as an amber bound gnat within long-term legislative paralysis.

Argue the political particulars if you must, but the optics of the final outcome will be quite out of our control.

Lou Reed’s Dirty Blvd. --A Songwriter's Appreciation

 

A Songwriter’s Appreciation:

Lou Reed’s Dirty Blvd.

Anyone passingly familiar with the mystique and work of Lou Reed would be aware of his status as one of the primary progenitors of the “new honesty” in rock: an unflinching stylistic trend that preceded "punk" in the mid to late 70's. Ian Hunter & Mott the Hoople, David Bowie, NY Dolls, Iggy & The Stooges, Alice Cooper, etc. were fresh new voices that returned to and embraced a stark expressionism. Vivid and lyrical, it was not altogether nascent, but a return to the blunter styles of early blues and rock. Eric Burdon & The Animals, early Rolling Stones—perhaps even Buddy Holly-- were ‘punk’ in that the delivery was direct, forthright and unadorned with productions stripped down to big notes and sounds with a won’t-run-can’t-hide presentational approach that torched all chances for misinterpretation.

Since then, the tradition continues from mid to late 70’s to now with New Wave/Punk icons The Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, The Stooges, Buzzcocks, Patti Smith, Black Flag (continually Henry Rollins…) into the Post-Punk 80’s & 90’s with B-52s, Talking Heads, Gang of Four, Severed Heads, R.E.M., Mission of Burma, U2 and on to post-punk revivalists like The Strokes, Social Distortion,etc: those who embrace a more direct style to convey many and varied themes, tales, rants and laments, the last of which may hazard to be romance and love if those particular yarns were abjectly truthful, proud and with nary a nod to vulnerability. Sweetness for its own sake was elementa non grata.

Lou Reed was the principle writer of the Velvet Underground before a long career of collaborative adventure and solo works, and among the first of these artists to lyrically present society’s underbelly, its underdogs, the under-served and under-represented writ large and under-explored. His social commentaries were largely delivered through the lenses of vividly drawn characters, and singling out society’s soulless and villainous entities, dulcet-toned rants of street-corner commiseration. 

"Lou Reed doesn't just write about squalid characters, he allows them to leer and breathe in their own voices, and he colors familiar landscapes through their own eyes. In the process, Reed has created a body of music that comes as close to disclosing the parameters of human loss and recovery as we're likely to find. That qualifies him, in my opinion, as one of the few real heroes rock & roll has raised."

—Mikal Gilmore, Rolling Stone, (1979)

Mainstream pop music, as with film or any other medium, might include the merely sincere among its myriad characteristics, but it was Punk that flipped the switch refreshingly back to Rock and Roll’s original proclamatory (and in the purest sense, mandatory) adherence to the ethos of “saying what you mean” with as little incidental packaging as possible. The superfluous is an obstruction, no lightweight consideration especially when constructing a narrative arc no longer than a 3 minute record.

During his final few years alive Reed returned to radio hosting along with old pal producer and alas, recently departed Hal Wilner--the gleefully received eclectic weekly 5 hour New York Shuffle on Sirius-XM which at this writing still continues, with the implicit “you’re welcome if you’re doing something interesting” playlist policy. His broad-scope spin choices revealed other interesting aspects to his top-shelf artistic taste.

Throughout his artistic life Lou Reed maintained a loyalty to all that is straightforward and sure-handed, even when the musical facility was perhaps a bit precarious.

As a performer, Reed mostly recorded and/or performed clean—or broadly dirty—presentations and portraits that relied on his deft ability to wrangle as much potency from a cunningly considered lyric, a true gift to be appreciated again and again throughout his generous canon of well-turned phrases.

During his early growth as a student of journalism, film-making and creative writing he was profoundly impressed by the high-octane possibilities of well deliberated minimalism, propelling his lyric writing ever more toward that ideal.            

 The basic, aurally strong-boned construction of punk provided the perfect accommodation for Reed’s glib style which stands starkly and undeniably expressive, with imagery abiding in scandalous cahoots with primal rhythms and multi-entendre word craft.

It’s this hybrid brew of narrative styles that I find the most effecting throughout the Lou Reed catalog. It’s sneaky, as though there may all the while be one continuous chaotic sub-text, a slip-stream cum river raging beneath a mundanely dead-pan commentary. I find Reed’s dryly elegant effusiveness a deceptively rich archeological terrain begging to be upturned for closer scrutiny.

One of my personal all-time favorite songs can be found on the1989 album Lou Reed release New York, a contiguous three-act collection that was performed (sometimes stubbornly) in its sequenced entirety during its initial promotional tour.

 For those allowing the indulgence, I’ve chosen the song Dirty Blvd. for a somewhat overly-granular if not duly reverent unpacking: an “under the hood” look at why I consider it an exemplary piece of great songwriting, its layout so vivid and masterful that I had somehow managed to overlook it’s mostly spoken delivery for years (after recently listening with a college class of young aspiring songwriters, one student exclaimed that it was “the weirdest rap song” he’d ever heard).

The song's urban universe revolves around the ambiguously young, cursedly poor, dreamily wistful Pedro. One might deduce that within the described relentless and cruel environment that his pragmatic coping devices will inevitably mature along with his hopelessness into more insidious escape mechanisms and an illicit and morally deficient adult existence.

Bleak? Undoubtedly. But truthful and credibly fashioned as only a native empath of “the mean streets” would manage. Over the years the images and impressions within this haunting tale would come to wrap ever closer around my head much as this harsh reality would tighten intractably around pitiful Pedro’s choked future. See if you might experience the same reaction.

First, the lyric only:

(The mix of the recording is wonderfully narrator-centric, as if the storyteller waits just out of the frame during the compellingly simple guitar intro before stepping in, immediately nose to nose with us listeners)

Dirty Blvd. 

(Lou Reed) 

Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel

He looks out a window without glass

The walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet

His father beats him 'cause he's too tired to beg

He's got 9 brothers and sisters--they're brought up on their knees

It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs

Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man

but that's a slim chance, he's going to the boulevard

He's going to end up, on the dirty boulevard

He's going out, to the dirty boulevard

He's going down, to the dirty boulevard

This room cost 2,000 dollars a month, you can believe it man, it's true

Somewhere a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants

No one here dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything

they dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em

That's what the Statue of Bigotry says

Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death

and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

Get ‘em out, on the dirty boulevard

Going out, to the dirty boulevard

They're going down, on the dirty boulevard

Going out

Outside it's a bright night, there's an opera at Lincoln Center

Movie stars arrive by limousine

The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan

But the lights are out on the mean streets

A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel

He's selling plastic roses for a buck

The traffic's backed up to 39th street

The TV whores are calling the cops out for a suck

And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming

He's found a book on Magic in a garbage can

He looks at the pictures and stares up at the cracked ceiling

"At the count of 3" he says, "I hope I can disappear"

And fly fly away, from this dirty boulevard

I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly, fly, fly, fly, from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly away

I want to fly 

Now with some notes, just for fun:

(Of course, these thoughts, interpretations and suppositions are this writer’s alone. It’s perilous to “analyze” songwriting. Most writers recoil from the prospect and I apologize if the reader is repelled by this overstep. On the other hand, step off…it’s just a song and it's exceptionally good, as is always discussion)

Dirty Blvd. 

(Lou Reed) 

Pedro lives out of the Wilshire Hotel

He looks out a window without glass

(The stage is economically set within 5 seconds with these  first two lines.Taken literally: abject poverty.  Figuratively, it might suggest there is no lens or protective layer of shelter between outside and in: One reality. Pedro doesn’t live IN the Wilshire (“will share?”) Hotel, he lives out of it.

The walls are made of cardboard, newspapers on his feet

His father beats him 'cause he's too tired to beg

(Further establishing the environment as deprived, abusive, flimsy to the point of ephemera)

He's got 9 brothers and sisters--they're brought up on their knees

It's hard to run when a coat hanger beats you on the thighs

(The “begging” is reiterated as we learn there are many others there, and they are “brought up on their knees”, raised to believe that they are lower and worth less than most)

Pedro dreams of being older and killing the old man

but that's a slim chance he's going to the boulevard

(Back to Pedro, he dreams. To wit, his pathetic visionary aspiration is to one day murder his parent. And our credibly world-wise narrator dryly and jarringly dashes even that demented hope as futile, pointing out that Plan A is sadly:)

He's going to end up, on the dirty boulevard

He's going out, to the dirty boulevard

He's going down, to the dirty boulevard

(The signifiers here are quick and potent: “end up”, “going out”, “going down”)

This room cost 2,000 dollars a month, you can believe it man, it's true

Somewhere a landlord's laughing till he wets his pants

(Reed introduces what will be a recurring device here and elsewhere throughout the album, using defecation as a handy expression of a total lack of dignity and respect.)

No one here dreams of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything

They dream of dealing on the dirty boulevard

(Here again is the insistent mention of “dreams”, a term for aspirations, but now they lead irrevocably back to the “dirty boulevard”, perhaps as Robert Frost’s After Apple Picking refers to the hauntingly perseverating images which cannot be dispelled by an exhausted laborer at the end of a long day) 

Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I'll piss on 'em

That's what the Statue of Bigotry says

Your poor huddled masses, let's club 'em to death

and get it over with and just dump 'em on the boulevard

(Boldly animating--then desecrating—the Lady in the Harbor, taking four lines to further dehumanize the immigrants to so much rodential detritus thereby conflating to national policy the landlord “laughing while he wets...”)

Get ‘em out, on the dirty boulevard

Going out, to the dirty boulevard

He's going down, on the dirty boulevard

Going out

(Now we are introduced to the third act which offers some specificity to the job descriptions on the boulevard. “Going out” is a streetwalker’s standard pitch, while “going down” is often at offer)

Outside it's a bright night, there's an opera at Lincoln Center

Movie stars arrive by limousine

(We stay “out”, outside Pedro’s world, and the privileged and well-heeled are antithetically busy in theirs. Their night is “bright”, although Lou slyly and seductively reforms the word “limousine” into the name of a drug like “mescaline” or “Dexedrine”. Just as this listener is thinking this, the following lines affirm the theme)

The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan

But the lights are out on the mean streets

(No explanation required.)

A small kid stands by the Lincoln Tunnel

He's selling plastic roses for a buck

(I discovered that The Robert Frost poem alludes to “stem end and blossom end” as well as other salient images and themes that correspond not too remotely.) 

The traffic's backed up to 39th street

The TV Whores are calling the Cops out for a suck

(A vivid scene,with metaphors for those who are looking. Economical phrasing right down to numbers and acronyms.)

And back at the Wilshire, Pedro sits there dreaming

He's found a book on Magic in a garbage can

He looks at the pictures and stares at the cracked ceiling

"At the count of 3" he says, "I hope I can disappear"

(The “cracked ceiling”: figurative, literal with multiplied metaphoric weight and now, after all, Pedro’s dream and hope, is to disappear…)

And fly fly away, from this dirty boulevard

I want to fly, from dirty boulevard

I want to fly, from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly, fly, fly, fly, from the dirty boulevard

I want to fly away

I want to fly

(The Doo-Wop style backsing –remember the doot da doot in Walk On The Wild Side?—function as Greek Chorus and Uriah Heep, ushering the listener and Pedro to whatever comes next. Another voice --a grown man-- assumes Pedro’s persona with the vociferous desire: “I wanna fly”)

 This song is to me a wonderful example of how a simple, thoughtfully considered lyric can achieve amazing and transporting results.

Many Thanks, Lou.

 ~JC