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A Machiavellian Deal

Posted in Current Events, Quote, tagged , , on January 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

 

“A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.”

― Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Character matters.

I have written this before. The words, the actions, and the manner of the leader of a nation are tremendously important. They shape the words, actions and manner of the nation.

Think of the great and revered leaders of our past. Abraham Lincoln. FDR. JFK. MLK. Even LBJ in those moments that mattered. All were fallible men with human flaws, yet for the most part all spoke in aspirational terms, for the betterment and elevation of all people. Their words, their actions, and their manner gave us a template for behavior.

What we are experiencing now is the result of the words, the actions and the manner of a person unfit to lead this nation, a man who does not seek to elevate all the citizens of this land. He and his apologists and enablers, especially those in power who take their cues from him, have set a divisive tone, one that pits us one against another. 

His ugly manner, his crude behavior, his hateful words, and the embrace of lies and lurid conspiracies with no basis in reality have taken hold in his followers. This along with his selfish and narcissistic behavior have become the template for his followers. They exhibit the same selfish, illogical and uninformed thinking as their leader.

I have asked how those who have stood behind the president can justify their support for a man who deals exclusively in lies and hate speech. I have been told that while they don’t particularly his “style,” they endorse his actions. 

This is a justification I have never understood. This Machiavellian bargain is totally unacceptable because, for those who lead nations, “style” matters. Style comes in the form of their words, their actions and the manner in which they treat the totality of their citizens. It is character.

You can’t accept his actions without accepting the whole of his character. He and the wreckage he has produced are a result of those who thought they could pussyfoot around his style, that they could somehow rationalize away those many ugly parts of  his character in exchange for a few things that they coveted for their own benefit. 

Well, it doesn’t work that way, folks.

It’s a package deal. 

“In for a penny, in for a pound” as the saying goes. 

Everything in his character, including his racism and acceptance of white supremacy, belongs to those folks now.  

Some will say they never saw this type of thing coming, that nothing pointed to this sort of thing happening. 

My response to that, as our next president likes to say, is Come on, Man!

It has been in the open and in plain sight since long before he was first nominated to be the Republican candidate in 2016. It was written in his words, his actions and his behavior in the years he has been a public figure. Nothing in his character suggested he would be anything but a disaster as the leader of this country.

He even pointed out plainly that this time was on the horizon for this nation under his leadership. In his inaugural address in 2017, he promised us American Carnage.

That is truly the one promise he made good on.

Character matters.

Once you accept the deal to overlook the character of your leaders, your own character becomes attached to theirs. It goes to the quote at the top from The Prince, the classic written in the 1530’s by Niccolo Machiavelli that gave the world the phrase The ends justifies the means. While there are many who hold this as a principle, Machiavelli advised people to try to follow great men so that they might attain at least a tinge of that greatness for themselves.

Conversely, we are tinged and marked as well by our bonds to the horrible and the evil. 

We know what this man is– a cheap gold-plated shell filled with lies and hatred.

Those who were attracted to appearance of his shiny surface in the past now carry his tinge.

Those who support him going forward have adopted his character.

And character matters.

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

 

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Yikes

Posted in Current Events, tagged on January 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Well, the first week of 2021 is behind us.

Yikes. 

The horror show that was 2020 lasted for what seemed ten years. 2021, thus far, seems intent on carrying on that legacy.

So much craziness has taken place in such a short span of time that things that have momentous ramifications get thrown aside. I mean, I can hardly believe that it has only been five days since the now notorious hour long phone call from the president*** to the Georgia Secretary of State was first revealed. It seems like it was a month ago.

The elections in Georgia that swung the balance of power in the Senate and opened up the field for what is possible by the incoming Biden administration took place Tuesday, a mere three days ago. Three days! 

And it was just the day before yesterday that the incited insurrection took place at the Capitol where five citizens died, including one law enforcement officer. 

And yesterday, amid the ever increasing calls for the resignation or impeachment of the president*** of this country,  over 4,000 Americans died from covid-19. 

4,000 souls. 4,000 families. In one awful day in a week that did it’s best to outdo the high bar set by the year 2020.

I don’t know what the coming week or weeks will bring but I am more than a little apprehensive.

I’ll get back to you on January 21, in what will most likely feel like several years from now.

Yikes.

Here’s a great tune from Alabama Shakes to let you know that we can get through the next few weeks. It’s Hold On.

Hold on, folks. We can get through it.

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Georgia on My Mind

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , , , on January 6, 2021| 4 Comments »

Other arms reach out to me
Other eyes smile tenderly
Still, in peaceful dreams, I see
The road leads back to you, to you, my beautiful Georgia
Georgia, no peace I find
Just an old sweet song keeps Georgia on my mind

—Hoagy Carmichael, Georgia on My Mind

Nothing more this morning but a sigh of relief and a big “thank you” to the good people of the state of Georgia. Here’s a strong rendition of the song Georgia on My Mind performed by a collected group of Broadway stars. Lots of talent here.

I was going to play the seminal version from Ray Charles, by far the best known and most powerful single performance of the song which was written in 1930 by Hoagy Carmichael. Willie Nelson also had a sweet quieter version of the song that went to Number 1 on the charts in 1978.

But give a listen and, if you’re so inclined, send out some psychic thanks to our friends in Georgia. 

Have a good day and let an old sweet song keep Georgia on your mind…

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Crazy

Posted in Current Events, Music, Quote, tagged , , , on January 4, 2021| 2 Comments »

That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

― Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

Wow. Just wow.

There are a lot of different connotations for the word crazy.

It’s used to describe pathological insanity.

Or used to describe situations that are wild and excessive, beyond the norm. That party was crazy!

Or it can describe enthusiasm. I’m crazy about pie. And I am crazy about pie, by the way.

Or it can describe foolishness. I was crazy to think there would be pie.

Or annoyance. Your talking about pie all the time is driving me crazy!

There are probably more. But almost any use of it could be applied to the phone call that was released yesterday. I am not going to get into details, which are all over the news if you’re not yet aware, except to say this is not pie crazy.

It is crazy crazy. Dangerously crazy. Criminally crazy.

The terrible thing is that it’s been this way for the last four years and way too many people have twisted themselves into pretzels and diminished their own integrity in trying to explain, justify, and rationalize their continued backing of this man* and his administration. But the craziness of the revelations of this weekend provide a strong and fitting exclamation point to mark the end of this presidency.

Those who continue to back and believe this man* and the multitude of conspiracies associated with him at this point might want to pause and examine their own state of mind and their personal motivations.

Perhaps ask themselves, “Do I want my name forever associated with this kind of crazy?” They might want to take note of the words at the top from Erich Fromm. 

History will note their decision.

Unfortunately, this is not yet the absolute end and exclamation point to this presidency***. There are still fifteen days of escalating craziness ahead as this man* tries to hold onto the power and protection of the office. If you don’t think this is a dangerous moment, note that yesterday’s crazy antics overshadowed the release of a letter signed by the 10 living former Secretaries of Defense stating that the elections have been decided and that the military should not under any circumstance be involved in any effort to overturn the results. Not something you see under more normal and saner circumstances.

Yeah, crazy days still ahead.

Here’s some good crazy– no, it’s not pie— to cleanse your palate. A little Patsy Cline with her legendary rendition of the Willie Nelson classic, Crazy.

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Jumping Into the Fire

Posted in Current Events, Early Paintings, Music, tagged , , , on January 3, 2021| 5 Comments »

You can climb a mountain, you can swim the sea
You can jump into the fire but you’ll never be free
You can shake me up or I can break you down
Oh, oh
We can make each other happy
Oh, we can make each other happy
We can make each other happy
Oh, we can make each other happy

—Harry Nilsson, Jump Into the Fire

First Sunday of the new year. This coming first week of 2021 may well be one of the ugliest and most dangerous and undemocratic in our history. There is a lot of treachery at hand from those who would abuse our system and rile deadly passions among the populace for purely selfish gains. While I don’t know what might happen in the coming days, I believe we will survive this stress test. We may take some dings and who knows what lasting damage might be done, but we’ll get through.

We’re at a point where words from anyone, let alone mine, won’t have much effect so lets play the first Sunday song of the 2021. Fittingly, it is Jump Into the Fire from the late great Harry Nilsson.

The complete lyrics are above in all their glory. Among his many talents as a songwriter, Nilsson had a genius for taking simple songs and making them memorably powerful. For example, his Coconut— You put de lime in de coconut, you drink ’em bot’ togedder/ Put de lime in de coconut and you feel better— is a one chord song.

One chord. Even a musical moron like me could play it.

Anyway, here’s the song. The little triptych at the top is from way back in 2002 and is called Waiting For the Fire, a not so subtle commentary on the coming weeks.

Have a good day.

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Saying a New Year’s Prayer

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , on January 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

It’s New Year’s Day. We’ll attempt to shake off the stink and wreckage of the Year 2020, as difficult as that may be, and move into the new year. We see 2021 coming at us all clean and shiny with that new year smell. An optimistic outlook and a year filled with endless possibilities.

Well, that’s the popular belief, what we hold onto in order to get through the day.

Yes, there are brighter days ahead but there are some darker ones as well, especially in the next few months. But we must maintain faith in who we are as a people, believing in truth, equality, and justice. We must have the willpower to reject the ignorance, selfishness, misinformation, and nativist hatred so much on display in recent times. 

Yes, we are off-balance and wounded as we come into this new year. But we have the balance and strength to withstand troubles and if we maneuver the coming days with grace and wisdom, perhaps our optimism will become more tangible and less wishful thinking.

The song, New Year’s Prayer, is from the late Jeff Buckley, who in his short life left us a remarkable version of the Leonard Cohen song, Hallelujah, and much more. This song has a mantra-like feel to it with the phrase … feel no shame for what you are… as a refrain. It doesn’t look forward or back with any hope or regret– it is just in the moment. And that’s how I feel about the turning of this year. What will be, will be.

Wishing you all a good New Year with the hope that feel no shame for what you are.

What we are.

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Don’t Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes at Me

Posted in Advice, Current Events, Music, tagged , , , , on December 31, 2020| Leave a Comment »

And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been, full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands; and let us see that we learn to take it without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910

Gosh, I wish Rilke was sending me letters. I always seem to find something in his collected letters that speaks directly to me, something that helps me better understand my own place in the world.

Give me his letters and the Peanuts comic strip and I am all set for advice on how to live my life.

Rilke’s words above on the New Year speak loudly this year. Let us look at 2021 as a clean slate, a tabula rasa, that that is filled with new potential. The time ahead may be filled with hard work and stressful times but we should use every available minute of it in attempting to make 2021 far better than its predecessor. 

I know that these words can sound like empty platitudes but I truly hope they ring true this year and that we don’t waste the gift of time we are given.

Have a happy and quiet New Year’s Eve. Stay safe and perhaps next year at this time, we can truly celebrate the end of a wonderful year.

For those of you who don’t buy into my hopeful look forward and plan on partying your brains out tonight, here’s a song from Wynonie Harris, the great blues shouter who many consider the father of rock and roll. His style, his stage moves and provocative hip gyrations were swiped and adapted by Elvis, who some thought was the G-rated version of Wynonie Harris. His stuff really rocks and this song, Don’t Roll Those Bloodshot Eyes at Me, reminds me of the best work of Louis Prima, which is pretty high praise.

So, enjoy and bid goodbye to 2020 tonight in whatever way you see fit. May we all have a happy New Year in 2021.

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Culmination 2020

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, Quote, tagged , , , , , on December 28, 2020| 2 Comments »

“Culmination”- Now at the West End Gallery

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

-Leonardo da Vinci

As we count down the last four days of this excruciatingly long year of 2020, I was looking for a a painting that had to do with the endpoint of things. I immediately thought of the piece shown here, Culmination, that is currently at the West End Gallery.

Its title came about because I saw the path in it as being the trunk of a tree with the paths going off each side as its limbs. The Red Tree at the top was the endpoint of this tree much like each of us are in our own genealogies.

Genealogically, each of us sits at the very top of a pyramid where everyone below us in that pyramid has endured wars, illnesses, pandemic and plague, persecution and imprisonment, and even slavery and holocaust just to get us to this place and time. We are the culmination, the very pinnacle of our family tree. 

For now.

Eventually, we are just part of the trunk with a branch that goes on and on. Or one that breaks off and abruptly ends.

I thought this piece would fit well with the end of this year. So many of the things that came to bear in this strange and awful 2020 were the culmination of events, lives, and organisms that developed and grew– and often worsened– in the years and decades before.

They all seemed to converge to make this year feel like an endpoint, a culmination of some sort.

For some, it was the ultimate endpoint, maybe the end of days as the evangelicals call them. For some, it felt like the end of democracy was all too close to its end here. And this year certainly felt like it marked the end of civil discourse and civility in general.

And of course, for hundreds of thousands of families, the pandemic brought an end to the lives of all too many loved ones. 

2020 was a year that sits atop a pyramid of horrors and atrocities. Hopefully, as it draws to a close later this week, it’s a position it maintains for a long time to come. The year that pushes it further down this monstrous pyramid is not one I wish to endure.

Have a good day, okay?

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The Times They Are A-Changin’

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , , , , on December 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“Sublime”– Now at the Principle Gallery

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

–Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’

I’ve heard this Bob Dylan song hundreds of times over the decades since it first came out in 1964 and a particular line in it always jumps out at me, even in idle listening. The line is: Don’t stand in the doorway/Don’t block up the hall/For he that gets hurt/Will be he who has stalled.

I have always read it as being about the inevitability of change and that those who try to stand in its way rather than trying to adapt are the losers in the end. The fact that it is used in a verse that refers to senators and congressmen makes it pointedly topical, especially in times when the present Senate Republican majority leader has been heard telling a group of big donors in recent days that he will oppose and stall every bill put forward by the Democrats, even bills he considers good bills. He said he would not allow them any victories.

That means he also will not allow the American people any victories, any gains, as he darkly tries to stall progress and change. We have seen this act before and have suffered from his mean-spirited intransigence.

But try as he might, change will come, in one way or another. It can be slowed or stalled but it is only temporary and eventually it bursts through all obstacles, usually obliterating them in the process. Like the lines from the Dylan song.

So, for this last Sunday in this monumental and often awful year of 2020, I thought it fitting that I play a version of this song, probably one you haven’t heard before. It’s from a 1969 album called Dylan’s Gospel from a group called The Brothers & Sisters of L.A., which was a group of L.A. based studio backup singers organized to record an album of Dylan covers in a gospel format. The group included some pretty high profile studio singers including Merry Clayton who I have wrote about here in the past. She is best known for her searing vocals on Gimme Shelter from the Rolling Stones. She is the lead on today’s song and knocks it out of the park.

The album was not a commercial success so this was the only effort from the group but it left behind several powerful versions of Dylan’s songs including The Times They Are A-Changin’.  So, let’s wrap up this year with some gospel firepower, brush aside the barriers and let the times a-change as they surely must.

Have a good Sunday.

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Polishing the Touchstone

Posted in Current Events, Music, Quote, tagged , , , , on December 24, 2020| 1 Comment »

 

We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology … But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.

― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Murakami’s words above are a continuation of yesterday’s theme, how early memory embeds deeply and remain with us forever. It’s one of those obvious truths that becomes more and more evident as the years pile up. I’ll probably revisit some deep recollections today, as I usually do around this time every year.

Polishing the touchstone.

Here’s a warm wish to all of you for a happy holiday. May you assist your young ones in creating their own touchstones of happiness or even create a new one for yourself.

Here’s a Christmas tune that goes back to the basis for the day, Christmas Must Be Tonight, from The Band. As with most everything they did, it feels right.

Stay safe out there. Merry Christmas.

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