"We are still called upon to give aid to the beggar who finds himself in misery and agony on life's highway. But one day, we must ask the question of whether an edifice which produces beggars must not be restructured and refurbished."
One of the great recordings of the 1970s, or any time for that matter, Roscoe Mitchell's Nonaah (pronounced No Nay Ah) (1976-77) has just been reissued as an expanded & meticulously remastered 2-CD set by Nessa Records. I vividly recall being completely eviscerated upon first hearing the solo version of the title track (perhaps on WNUR -- perhaps even during my own show -- can't remember exactly). This piece was performed for an audience that had come to hear Anthony Braxton, who cancelled at the last minute. Mitchell says in the liner notes:
The music couldn't move till [the audience] respected me, until they realized that I wasn't going anywhere, and if someone was going it would have had to be them.
This only hints at the intense tension-made-audible on this track. The entire album is as fresh and relevant as ever.
This reissue, along with the recent publication of George Lewis's AACM book, and the imminent release of Mosaic's box set of Braxton'sComplete Arista Recordings, will surely lead to a reevaluation of a large chunk of creative music history.
During a 1945 Duke Ellington radio broadcast included on The Treasury Shows, Vol. 3, the announcer provides this astonishingly aggressive sales pitch:
And now, ladies and gentlemen, let's talk about waste for a moment or two. The Duke's music is much too good to waste. You know that. Anything good is too precious to be wasted. And important things like courage and lives certainly must not be wasted. Still, you in your safe homes can be guilty of wasting American lives. Ask yourself: Isn't it true that if a man loses his life or a limb because he didn't have that extra bullet that would have killed the Jap who got him, it's somebody's fault that that bullet wasn't there? [pause] You've got to admit that. Now, who can we pin that on? On you perhaps? Because every piece of equipment in this war starts on its way to the fighting fronts from the United States Treasury. If the Treasury doesn't have the money, someone doesn't get that extra bullet. If the Treasury doesn't have the money, perhaps someone didn't buy that extra war bond. Perhaps that someone is you.
For better and sometimes worse, scores of other filmmakers in both the avant-garde and the commercial mainstream have been influenced by Mr. Conner’s shocking juxtapositions and propulsive, rhythmically sophisticated montage. MTV should have paid him royalties.
It would be Conner's singular contribution [to cinema] to remove the viewer from the Brakhagean paradigm -- from a close encounter, that is, with the personal vision of the filmmaker -- and from Hollywood's third-person, omniscient fictions as well. The result would be a completely novel viewing experience that might best be termed "second-person film," continually addressing itself to the experience of "you," the film viewer, through an active reworking of the already coded and manipulated cultural material of the movies. Highly constructed and meticulously crafted from cheap cast-offs, peripheral forms, and eccentric images of his own devising, Conner's work would challenge the very legibility of the medium in any of its contemporary manifestations. Through a break with realism and a defiant insistence on liberating the materiality of film, he would deliver cinema from the protocols of both conventional and experimental practice. No mere formalist, however, Conner deployed his uniquely radical practice, like the Cubists before him, in the service of understanding the cultural and social significance of his materials -- specifically, by unmasking the ways in which meanings are constructed and conveyed in the culture. It was, indeed, an explosion in a film factory.
Earlier this year, in a letter boosting John McCain's conservative bona fides, Bob Dole pointed out "that McCain’s voting record — as measured by support for the president — mirrored that of the ultra-conservative former [now dead!] U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.)." Since McCain seems to be having trouble finding the right people to run his campaign, I nominate Bob Dole.
Back to the happy occasion: I propose the July 4th holiday be changed from one celebrating the Declaration of Independence to one celebrating Helms's death. We don't have enough holidays celebrating the deaths of major assholes.
On Aug. 3 [1993] Senator Moseley-Braun was in a Senate elevator with two other senators. Senator Helms entered the elevator, saw Senator Moseley-Braun and began to sing, "I wish I was in the land of cotton." Senator Helms then turned to Senator Orrin Hatch, one of the other senators present, and said: "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries."
Now, I know it may be un-ladylike, but wouldn't you love to see Carol Moseley-Braun squat over Helms's casket and take a big ol' dump while singing "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing"?
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
UPDATE: Perhaps Helms fell dead after someone showed him this:
Barack Obama's promise to make a play for North Carolina -- a state that has consistently voted Republican since 1980 -- might just have some potential to really pay off, a new poll from Rasmussen suggests.
The numbers: McCain 45%, Obama 43%, within the ±4% margin of error. This is consistent with other recent polls that have shown McCain with only a small lead here.
And while McCain was considered too "centrist" by many radically regressive Republicans and neo-cons, it must be emphasized that, per Matt Taibbi:
McCain may be even more crazy than the Republican mainstream on the issue that matters most of all: the war in Iraq and war in general. My guess is that Republican voters are not going to mind that McCain's candidacy might drive a stake through the heart of the weenie fascism of Rush and Hannity, once they figure out that the candidate is a solid bet to deliver them World War III. And that should scare the shit out of us all.
Yes, we should be scared. And no, we can never underestimate American bloodlust. But I may be naive enough to think that McCain can't win on Iraq (or Iran), and he knows it. His strategy will emphasize his experience (quantity-over-quality, of course) and his "straight-talking maverick" persona to convince "his friends" that, policy details aside, he's the type of all-white all-right guy you can trust.
This is our time. Our time to turn the page on the policies of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new ideas to the challenges we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the country we love.
My art is about paying attention – about the extremely dangerous possibility that you might be art.
I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly, because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.
Having made the empty canvases (R.R.: A canvas is never empty), Rauschenberg became the giver of gifts. Gifts, unexpected and unnecessary, are ways of saying Yes to how it is, a holiday.
To Whom It May Concern: The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.
I have a simple question: why is it that the Democratic nomination was decided tonight? What happened tonight that hadn't happened before?
Why a trick question?
The reason is simple: the established media was never covering the Democratic nomination campaign. They were, instead, covering some form of kabuki theater where reality is ignored and liberals are ritually gutted on the public stage for the pleasure of elite, rich, white, male pundits everywhere.
Our longest run of work was a European tour of close to three weeks; I think the approval we found there caused the music to advance considerably. Shortly after our return to New York, we began a residency in a coffee house on Bleecker Street, playing for whatever money was collected at the door. We disbanded on a night we each made 35 cents.
--Steve Swallow, in the liner notes of the CD reissue of Free Fall.
The “cheap-energy mind,” as Wendell Berry called it, is the mind that asks, “Why bother?” because it is helpless to imagine — much less attempt — a different sort of life, one less divided, less reliant. Since the cheap-energy mind translates everything into money, its proxy, it prefers to put its faith in market-based solutions — carbon taxes and pollution-trading schemes. If we could just get the incentives right, it believes, the economy will properly value everything that matters and nudge our self-interest down the proper channels. The best we can hope for is a greener version of the old invisible hand. Visible hands it has no use for. ***Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great. Sometimes you have to act as if acting will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will. *** The idea is to find one thing to do in your life that doesn’t involve spending or voting, that may or may not virally rock the world but is real and particular (as well as symbolic) and that, come what may, will offer its own rewards.
He suggests we should grow "some — even just a little" of our own food.
Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money. --Cree Indian Proverb
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.
Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.
Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet. * * * In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.
The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics. * * * One reason is fear of embarrassment. * * *
One important, if subliminal, reason is self-interest. Reporters and editors love a close race — it’s more fun and it’s good for business.
The man in the White House invades a nation that didn't threaten us, kills 4,000 Americans, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, destabilizes an entire region and it was all based on blatant lies and he gets to stay in office, while Spitzer wanted to have sex, admittedly in an unthinking way, and he has to resign?
I am writing to correct the second sentence in the above-referenced article, published on March 9, 2008: "The [Wyoming] victory, while in a state with only 18 delegates, was welcome news for the Obama campaign as it sought to blunt any advantage Mrs. Clinton might gain from her victories in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday."
This statement regarding Clinton's "victory" in Texas is inaccurate. While Clinton won more delegates from the Texas primaries, neither candidate can be said to have won Texas, since -- as the Times' own "Election Guide" shows -- the state's caucus results are not final. Indeed, most informed opinion expects Obama's gain in delegates from the caucuses will give him the overall delegate "win" in Texas.
The Times is not alone in conjuring up a Texas "win" for Clinton:
Clinton scored campaign saving victories in Ohio and Texas last Tuesday after 11 straight losses to Obama.
Last Tuesday night, mainstream media bandied about the story that Hillary Clinton had won Texas; but it wasn’t true. Responsible journalism would have necessitated qualifying the Texas call, given the partial results of Tuesday night; but they didn’t. Texas has a two step contest- a primary and a caucus- much like a few other states. And now the Texas democrats have given a preliminary account of both the primary and caucus results, which shows that overall: Obama won at least three more delegates than she did. And also, that he won at least 100,000 more votes when both contests are combined. She won the primary in the day and he won the caucus in the night. This is a fact, and yet mainstream media perpetuates the myth that Hillary won Texas. What could be their motivation here?
It seems to me that the mainstream media, having generated the conventional wisdom that they themselves have "taken it easy" on Obama, now feel obliged to prove themselves "fair and balanced" by conjuring up a false "Clinton comeback" narrative. As if this primary contest weren't dramatic enough.
As Clinton gears up her efforts for coup by super delegate, threatening civil war within the party, it bears noting that in her best week of the campaign since her New Hampshire victory, she actually lost ground in the race.
[It was] a +6 delegate week for Obama officially, +7 unofficially.
My list was incomplete. ...officially, Obama has a 13-delegate advantage for the week even before Mississippi votes tomorrow. Throw in the unpledged delegate in Wyoming who will certainly be an Obama delegate, and unofficially, Obama notched a 14-delegate gain in this "week from hell" for him. ...
A few more "bad" weeks like this and he'll have the nomination nicely sewed up.
...the Obama campaign has succeeded not by attracting starry-eyed followers who place their faith in hope but by motivating committed activists who are answering a call to national service. They're pouring their lifeblood into this campaign, not because they are in thrall to a cult of personality but because they're invested in the idea that politics matter, and that their participation can turn the current political system on its ear.
In reality, it already has. "We're seeing the last time a top-down campaign has a chance to win it," says [Joe] Trippi. "There won't be another campaign that makes the same mistake the Clintons made of being dependent on big donors and insiders. It's not going to work ever again."
6pm Monday, March 3rd at the Hyde Park Art Center 5020 S. Cornell Avenue Muller Meeting Room http://www.hydeparkart.org
TalkingPoint is a free monthly Monday evening series in which Chicago-based cultural producers share their ideas as a starting point for conversation in an intimate setting.
Since 2001, public art group Anti Gravity Surprise has addressed the concept of world peace in 9/11-themed multimedia project Gathering Motion; mounted a full eight-hour day of art and discussion about work with Second Shift; and hosted $election community art events to engage voters.
Co-founders Kathleen Duffy and Jennifer Karmin will speak about their collaborative approach and ongoing work Tell Us What You Think, an evolving public art project that will be distributed as a free workbook.
