Swimming Towards The Light

Looking over my last four years of writing I note the gathering dyspeptic tone.  If I had to draw a graph of it there would be a steady downward “tone” line with a sharp descending drop at the onset of the pandemic.  Before that point, there was still theatre, music, literature, and travel to think about, enjoy and write about, a distraction from the Anvil Chorus of Trumpian Transgressions.

This is not my first self-assessment.  A few weeks ago I wrote “We are all in survival mode now.  "This has all sorts of practical ramifications and seems to rob us of other activities.  For instance, my reading of fiction, for which there should be more time during this pandemic, is nearly impossible as existential dread has supplanted my patience. “

That “existential dread” was one of the reasons I couldn’t bear to watch the virtual Democratic National Convention these past few days.  I feared the Democrats would do something spectacularly dumb to jeopardize our one and only chance to remove a spectacularly amoral, non-presidential person from office who lost the popular vote by 3 million four years ago, but managed to inveigle his way into office via collusion and the outdated Electoral College.

As Tyler Elliot Bettilyon explains in Are You Suffering From Existential Dread? I obviously have AED (Acute Existential Dread), “an intense feeling of inconsequentiality triggered by external stimuli.” 

There is enough anxiety in our lives now, a deadly cocktail of environmental degradation, racial inequality, pandemic and healthcare hazards, main street economic woes, Internet facilitated conspiracy groups, militant supporters of a mostly unregulated 2^nd amendment, and the decline of American participation in world cooperation, to indeed trigger AED.  When you add Trump’s vitriol to the equation, it is exponential.

Joe Biden had my vote a long time ago.  Anyone from the Democratic Party would have had my vote.  AED indeed blocked my watching most of the DNC, fearful that we might unintentionally alienate voters we need to show up in the swing states.  But, the last night of the convention, I felt it I wanted to see Biden’s acceptance speech, watching it as I would the 7^th game of the World Series, bottom of the 9^th, bases loaded for my team, one run down, and one out.  Any baseball fan now understands the depth of my AED.

First, I saw 13-year-old Brayden Harrington who met Biden on the campaign trail and talked to him about his stuttering.  Brayden, when you bravely took the virtual stage and said "He told me that we were members of the same club: We stutter,” my hopes were raised for Biden’s subsequent speech.

Biden's speech was the pinnacle of his political lifetime, and ours as we are all struggling, swimming in the muck towards the light.  My AED will never be gone until the swampster-in-chief, along with his criminal cronies, are gone, gone, gone.  But after Biden’s speech, particularly its tone of inclusiveness, there is hopefulness.  I really believe, for the first time in four years, that there is a chance to address the fundamental existential threats to our way of life and life itself.  Maybe indeed we can make America great again.

Unfortunately, we see how Trump is setting this up, undermining the Post Office and already questioning the legitimacy of the election, preparing to challenge the results, no matter what they are.  The more he can make this close and the longer the final tally can be delayed, the higher the probability he can throw the results into a chaotic challenge.  This will not be like the disputed Gore –Bush 2000 contest, where the Supreme Court made the decision and it was accepted by Gore (who really did win).  No, Trump might undermine this for weeks afterwards, trying to throw it into the House of Representatives where each state gets one vote (even through there are more Democratic Representatives, there are more states with a majority of Republican Representatives and therefore their one vote counts disproportionately).

I don’t know how they (the Republicans) always seem to have an unfair advantage, but it is even more reason why Democratic turnout MUST be massive and there can be no question of the results, although they will still be challenged by Trump.  We might all have to go to DC with pitchforks to remove him.  Ah, that’s my AED speaking again.

 

Pandemic “Blues”

In addition to its deadly physical health consequences, there is a certain kind of sadness which COVID19 transmits unlike other tragedies.  One never gets over 9/11 except that murderous shock, once absorbed, we frail human beings went through Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, arriving at some form of acceptance.  Not so with this virus as it a slow-motion tragedy, one of our own making, and now failing to manage, with no real end in sight, other than civil discord which just exacerbates the issue.  Thus we are stuck at the grief stage, almost like an LP record reaching the end and then skipping in a loop, skipping, skipping …skipping.

 

Nothing has prepared us emotionally for these times, its dangers and its disruption.  Although we can escape to streaming forms of the arts, for many of us it is difficult to bear for long periods of time.  It’s even hard to read and write as this stage of grief is a barrier to thinking.  I find my piano to be an escape at times but the programs I usually play were for other, better times, so increasingly I’ve been turning to uncharted territory, playing pieces I’ve rarely played before.  In the process, I’ve learned some about Broadway history outside my zone of familiarity.  These pieces are not the well-worn ones I’ve played throughout my life by Rodgers and Hart, or Rodgers and Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, George Gershwin, etc. 

 

I recorded a couple on YouTube but, now, with some unease as a few view the platform as a form of competition.  I don’t pretend to be a pianist of any consequence, other than playing for myself, those who have enjoyed my work in retirement homes, and a few fund-raising luncheons I’ve played at.  My work in the theatre has been as a lobby pianist on opening night where background music was desired, not a performance.

 

So, although I know what I’m posting for this particular entry is not at the level that everyone has come to expect with current streamed performances, and we’ve seen some remarkable ones, YouTube is the only platform I can use for playing on all devices. 

 

First on my “COVID19 discovery quest” is a little known, but Tony nominated 1974 musical Over Here.  It derives its title from a plot involving WW II but was happening “over here.”  It played for a year on Broadway and was still playing to full audiences when it shut down over a salary dispute between the stars, the two remaining members of the Andrews Sisters, and the producers.

 

The song writers were the enormously successful team of the Sherman Brothers (Robert and Richard) who, previously unknown to me, may be the most prolific songwriting team of all time as they wrote mostly movie musical scores and in particular, when they were under contract with Disney for all of their hit musicals.  Over Here was their lone Broadway hit, and it included a number of good, solid Broadway melodies and one in particular hit me during these times, its title almost defining our unreal era as well, "Where Did the Good Times Go?"  Indeed, where did they go and will they ever come back in my lifetime?

 

It’s considered the musical’s “big number” sung near the end of the second act.  It’s plaintive melody and lyrics are perfectly married…

 

What fun we had, then laughter turned sad.

Oh, Where Did The Good Times Go?

Our hopes and plans slipped right through our hands.

Oh, where, Where Did The Good Times Go?

 

Some place some-where, instead of despair is the love we used to know:

Why can’t we return?

Won’t we ever return?

Oh, Where Did The Good Times Go?

 

Those are the simple lyrics but with a poignant message for our times as well.

 

 

From there I move back in time (1959), to a much less successful musical, The Nervous Set, which was written by an unknown team, Jay Landesman and Theodore J. Flicker, with lyrics by Fran Landesman, who was a poet of the beat generation, with music by Tommy Wolf who Fran Landesman met when he was a pianist on a gig.  The musical closed after only 23 performances.

 

Landesman had a fascinating, unconventional life which the New York Times’ perfectly captured in her obituary when she died almost ten years ago. 

 

Wolf began to transcribe some of her poetry to music after they met, culminating in this musical about a publisher (Fran’s husband, Jay) and his wife who leave their Connecticut suburb to visit Greenwich Village during the peak of its beat popularity.  Although the best-known song is undoubtedly “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most” which is a jazz standard, I turn to the lesser known "Ballad of the Sad Young Men." 

 

These are the partial lyrics…

 

Sing a song of sad young men, glasses full of rye

All the news is bad again, kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men, sitting in the bars

Knowing neon nights, and missing all the stars

All the sad young men, drifting through the town

Drinking up the night, trying not to drown

All the sad young men, singing in the cold

Trying to forget, that they're growing old….

 

This song, which has also been adopted by the jazz circuit, became a mainstay of gay bars.  It is mournful, and what can be sadder than the current time we are living through – pandemically, politically, and racially?

Where are We and Why?

When I began writing this blog I had little idea where it would lead me.  I imagined that it would be some sort of personal journal where I could express my thoughts, opinions, but not exactly detail my everyday life (who would care anyhow?) yet capture a sense of my personal history (more for family and friends and for my own recollection).  As it turns out, a large part of my writing migrated to politics and the economy and to plays and novels.  Those I recently edited, organized, tried to make some sense of, and published in both printed and eBook form. 

We are all in survival mode now.  This has all sorts of practical ramifications and seems to rob us of other activities.  For instance, my reading of fiction, for which there should be more time during this pandemic, is actually more difficult as existential dread supplants my patience for fiction.  No, instead, after getting through the New York Times, The New Yorker, and even our local Palm Beach Post, that precious commodity, time, has been consumed.  And although we are unable to go to theatre, or even out to eat, streaming the arts has taken that chunk of time, such as described in a previous entry on Emmet Cohen’s jazz stream, what PBS has to offer, and discovering the treasure chest of BBC PROMS.

A friend of mine once flattered me by comparing my writing to Samuel Pepys’ diary.  I make no such farfetched claim as Pepys wrote daily and at a time where a record of daily life in London (1660-1669) was unique.  Everyone writes today and I would imagine the output from everything written in one day would fill the entire Library of Congress plus.  No, mine is merely the thinking of an “everyman.”  Pepys also did not have to deal with privacy concerns as we now have to in the age of the Internet.  I wonder what he would think of today’s communication and how that would have curtailed the intimacy of his writing.

Pepys was witness to some of the major events of his time, such as the Great Fire of London of 1666 and, ironically, the Great Plague of 1665 (about which he commented “But, Lord!,  how sad a sight it is to see the streets empty of people”).  I now stand witness to our own Great Plague, its effects only to be understood when it is a thing of the past, and I have been witness to the “Great Fire” of fundamental changes to our society and politics during the first two decades of the 21^st century.

A while ago I had decided that I was mostly finished with writing about politics and economics as they seem to have entered the Twilight Zone of understanding.  I still feel that way, but at a certain point my blood boils and this is my only outlet, besides the endless emailing back and forth to friends, admittedly, ones who mostly agree with me, and thus, I am part of the problem.  Never in my recollection has this country become so blatantly divisive, as if the Civil War was never concluded.

Long ago I quoted the late preeminent science fiction writer Isaac Asimov who said in Newsweek (21 January 1980): “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life; nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

That is the heart of our existential crisis:  anti-intellectualism, anti-science, an acceptance of the transmutability of truth.  The traditional Republican Party, the one I grew up knowing, just no longer exists.  The intellectual conservatives that would be best represented by George Will (and would have included William Buckley if he were alive), have been usurped by Trumpians, born out of the “Tea Party” who have tapped into the vein of nationalism and anti-intellectualism which runs deep in this country. 

That was the knock on Adlai Stevenson in his 1952 and 1956 bid for the Presidency when he ran against Ike: he was TOO smart.  No, this country likes some traits of the common man, or at least the appearance of such.  Hey, Obama plays basketball well.  Our current President can identify an elephant, count backwards from 100 in increments of 7, and remember five words consecutively.  Based on such criteria, most people could be President as well.

He’s challenged Biden to a “Test Slam.”  How about taking a test for Antisocial Personality Disorder instead?  This would establish his sociopathic tendencies.  His blatant manipulative propagandist rhetoric, either on Twitter or delivered during so-called press conferences are manifestations of those.  Gustave Le Bon's classic The Crowd; A Study of the Popular Mind identified the essence of Trump’s so called “stable genius” way back in 1895: "The power of words is bound up with the images they evoke, and is quite independent of their real significance. Words whose sense is the most ill-defined are sometimes those that possess the most influence. Yet it is certain that a truly magical power is attached to those short syllables as [if] they contained the solution to all problems. They synthesize the most diverse unconscious aspirations and the hope of their realization. Reason and arguments are incapable of combating certain words and formulas. They are uttered with solemnity...and as soon as they have been pronounced an expression of respect is visible on every countenance, and all heads bowed. By many they are considered as natural forces, as supernatural powers. They evoke grandiose and vague images in men's minds, but this very vagueness that wraps them in obscurity augments their mysterious power."

He can turn a rational decision such as cancelling the Republican National Convention in Jacksonville next month into one of his propaganda messages, “only I can save you,” framing it in the context of his going against “expert advice” that it would be safe to hold the convention, this, of course, after exposing untold thousands to deaths due to his turning the wearing of face masks into a political statement.

Among his more serious mass manipulative propaganda are his recent “I approve this message” media, one showing an elderly woman watching a TV “news report” about defunding  the police, in stark black and white photography, when suddenly she hears her front door being rattled by a shadowy figure, forcing himself into her home with a crowbar.  She dials 911 and it rings and rings with no answer.  Suddenly the phone is shown lying on floor with a message along the lines that this is Joe Biden’s future for America.  Manipulative Advertising 101, you don’t sell the product, you sell the emotion.  He and his team are masters at scare tactics which are deplorable. 

So is his culpability in fomenting unrest with the use or threatened use of Federal troops in States, and exposing more people to this pandemic than is and was necessary, his ignorance of history and distain for scientific knowledge, his instability, his racist tendencies, his totalitarian use of the Judicial branch, commuting Roger Stone’s sentence but sending Michael Cohen back to prison because he is writing a book.  These remain unchecked, mired in obfuscation.  It is tragic that he and his enablers can claim that flying the Confederate flag is a form of “free speech” while attempting to suppress Cohen’s book, indeed an issue of free speech.  Does he know the difference, or does he not care?

His attempting to reopen schools while the pandemic rages in southern and western states is yet more tinder to be thrown into the flames of this pandemic.  Congress has adjourned without a package to protect the unemployed from being evicted from their apartments and or homes.  

He would like to blame China.  Maybe they are culpable for the virus’ origins, but that is one issue while dealing with its consequences both by China and then the rest of the world is another.  Why does such a large number of his followers fail to recognize the differences between how other countries have at least learned to live with this virus with lesser risk and our out of control lack of response? 

It is because we have a full-blown culture war, not a new one, but intensified by his rhetoric and failures.  To what extent should individual rights transcend the need to follow measures to protect the greater good of society?  This is the essence of why other countries have had relative success after the initial battle.

I can always dip into my blog for examples and one that comes to mind was when we were “fighting” with ourselves over the use of scanning equipment at airports that reveal outlines of one’s body.  The analogy to the “constitutional right” to not wear a mask is not far-fetched, although the mask issue is more deadly, and science so clearly has demonstrated the benefits of wearing one during this pandemic.  The irony is those most opposed to wearing a mask most favor a fast reopening of businesses, not recognizing that mask wearing will facilitate the latter.  From ten years ago I quote my entry “Get Over Your Junk.”  Some things never change.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Get Over Your Junk

Get over it already! Having an implanted medical device for almost twenty years and having flown frequently both domestically and internationally during that period, I've had more pat downs than Tiger Woods has had lap dances. Furthermore, having endured the indignity of backless hospital gowns and medical procedures on a number of occasions, my being naked on a faceless image of a body scan sure beats being blown to smithereens at 30,000 feet.

Amazing, this "outcry" against thorough airport screenings is exactly the kind of disruption terrorists want and the American public is buying right into it. Instead of just going through this in an orderly way to expedite the process, we conjure up images of our constitutional rights being violated. It will take only one tragic incident in the air to silence these critics, something they are inviting by their protests.

Do I think these rigid guidelines are the answer to combating terrorism in the skies? No, but they are part of a solution, and an easy one if everyone simply cooperates. Ten seconds in a body scanner is not too much to ask. Your "junk" is not so sacred. Stay home and never go to a hospital if you think it is.

Evoking John Updike and Philip Roth

I woke up this morning and had John Updike and Philip Roth on my mind.  They are the writers I grew up admiring the most and I’ve made a point of that repeatedly in these pages.  So why am I now dreaming of them in the half light of dawn, both now gone?  The answer came as I was exercising in our pool this morning (one of the few pluses of being self quarantined in Florida): the pandemic of course.

I’ve discussed their attitudes towards death in past entries, almost as if being a dress rehearsal, and aren’t we all more acutely aware of our own fragile existence during these times? Roth’s preoccupation with death gathers momentum in his later works while Updike’s is less transparent, although Rabbit at Rest is fairly unambiguous, not to mention poems like “Perfection Wasted.”

Their demise leaves a void in serious American fiction.  Imagine what they would have to write today.  I mostly read fiction to understand our world, not to hear a “swell” story. There are other forms of entertainment for that.   Navigating COVID-19 without those heartfelt companions is almost like performing on a tight-rope without a net, such as the image from Delmore Schwartz’s “The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me:” the “bear” (the body) “howls in his sleep because the tight-rope / trembles and shows the darkness beneath.”

This sudden longing for Updike and Roth made me curious about the progress Blake Bailey has made with the biography Roth authorized before his death, giving Bailey extensive interviews and documents.   Updike’s workman like biography was written by Adam Begley and published some six years ago.

But alas, after Googling the matter, Bailey (who I thought would write the Updike biography after writing magnificent ones of John Cheever and Richard Yates) is still working on the Roth biography and it is tentatively scheduled for publication in April 2021.  

 

However, there was an unexpected bonus in doing this research and that is coming across an absolutely breathtaking article by Charles McGrath who, as a former writer and editor for The New Yorker, knew both Philip Roth and John Updike.  His article, succinctly entitled “Roth/Updike” and published in the Autumn 2019 issue of The Hudson Review sheds a floodlight on their commonalities and clandestine competitiveness.  An abstract of this well written and impassioned article cannot do it justice, so here is a link.  Suffice it to say these two leading American writers will be remembered and studied for centuries to come.  No wonder they are on my mind.

Emmet’s Place

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons.  The young and great jazz pianist, Emmet Cohen, has created a Monday night streaming jazz session from his Harlem apartment which is nothing short of sensational.  He has an irresistible personality, prodigious talent, and a reverence for the history of jazz and its legendary performers.  It all converges at Emmet’s Place.

It is probably sacrilegious to observe that in many ways these live, streamed performances are at least as soul satisfying as seeing him and his bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole in person.  Streaming those performances mandated getting a Fire Stick as soon as Amazon got them back in stock.  Now we can enjoy these on the “big screen” with surround sound in the comfort of our home, as good as seeing them in a Club but without people talking, serving distractions or viewing obstructions.  The first time we saw Emmet perform was in NYC at Dizzy’s Club and honestly, we were blown away.

It’s just so special to watch him perform in the intimacy of his apartment and interface with his group and with special guests remotely or, more recently, in his apartment, such as the jazz vocalist and scatter supreme, Veronica Swift.   Most recently he hosted jazz legend, singer and pianist, Johnny O'Neal who sang his iconic “I'm Your Mailman.”  O’Neal also displayed his virtuosity on the piano. 

The last time we saw Emmet and Trio live was on the Jazz Cruise back in February, where we made sure to catch as many of his gigs as possible, sometimes having to bypass other sets to get a seat reasonably close to the stage.

We also admire Emmet the man: he is self effacing in spite of his remarkable talent.  His reverence for his predecessors and mentors greatly impresses us along with his genuine admiration for his fellow artists.  But putting those aside, he is one of the best and most versatile jazz pianists we’ve ever seen and he just turned 30.  Yes, 30.  We wish we could be around to witness his full maturation.

We’ve been blessed over the years to see some of the jazz piano greats in person:  Oscar Peterson, Claude Bolling, Bill Mays, Admad Jamal, to mention a few.  I should add Benny Green and Tamir Hendelman to the list, both of whom we saw on the ship.  Oh, I also used to see Dave Brubeck but that was in my dentist’s office in Westport!

The Emmet Cohen Trio has coalesced over a five year period to the point where they can playfully hand off to one another at unexpected times and in unexpected ways and it’s never quite clear whether anyone is  in charge.  They just sense when to dive into the musical conversation or pause and it makes for interesting, mesmerizing listening.   His side men bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole are outstanding performers in their own right and sometimes carry long solos.

Emmet has given himself over to a Jazz Masters series, playing with some of the greats.  He channels them as well as those who are no longer with us, with strains of Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, Art Tatum, Nat King Cole, Bud Powell, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk.  The point is, he can and does play all styles, straight jazz, stride, swing, rhythm’n’blues, and in synthesizing these, he creates his own unique, soulful style.  He can transition from block chords to light; fast improvised ascending and descending arpeggios which definitively land on the base note.  Just listen to him paying homage to the King of Ragtime, Scott Joplin, playing his "Original Rags" at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola @ Jazz at Lincoln Center some four years ago (when he was only 26!).

This is indeed what makes this young man so special.  In addition to his talent he has a genuine outgoing personality and a kilowatt smile.  A couple of months ago he was soloing at Emmet’s Place, taking requests from the audience via the YouTube’s streaming comment feature and I was typing “please play Johnny Mandel’s ‘Where Do I Start?’ and I wasn’t but a few keystrokes into the message, and he played it!  I almost fell out of my chair at how serendipitously that happened!  I emailed him afterwards about the strange coincidence and expressing my love of Mandel’s music (and wishing him a happy 30^th birthday which was just coming up, noting that it coincided with my wife’s, who is a mere 49 years older) and he was good enough to reply “That's so crazy!! Wonderful when the universe works wonders... Thanks for all the kindness, and happy bday to Ann!!”  That’s a mensch.

This last week Johnny Mandel passed away.  Perhaps Emmet will mark his passing with another Mandel medley in his next session.  I hope so.  The afternoon before I learned of Mandel’s death, I felt this strong compulsion to play some of his songs on my piano.  I ended up playing ALL of them (at least all of my favorites), even including “Song from M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless).”

It was as if something drew me to his music and that night reading the NYT, I learned that he died.  Now that is just plain bizarre.  I couldn’t help but think of that stunning medley Cohen played but a few weeks before, and the entry I wrote, now, more than two years ago about Mandel’s place in The Great American Songbook.

As we are self quarantined until there is an effective vaccine, which, who knows, could be for the rest of our lives, we’re hoping that Emmet’s streaming sessions will continue as it is our only way to be so close to the music we love and to preeminent musicians who bring it to life.  It’s one of the reasons we’ve joined Emmet’s “Exclusive” Club.  It gives members access to a “unique and ongoing creative feed’ and more significantly allowing us to feel that we’re part of his and his group’s journey, one well worth supporting, particularly as their tour revenue has dried up in these times of COVID-19 and uncertainty.  This support provides “a path for new innovative and creative endeavors to come to life.”  Indeed it does, and thank you Emmet for sharing your creative genius at Emmet’s Place.