What's my number?

Concepts like "dollar value" and "personal worth", much like a person's numerical age, are intrinsically meaningless abstractions that serve mainly to reinforce social conventions, perpetuate imbalances of power, and manipulate the uninformed.

Help yourself

Clergy invokes martyrdom to save themselves from total irrelevance

The Republican death march, pt. 2

So what happens now?

First, VOTE THE FASCISTS out! Replace conservatives with progressives at the BALLOT BOX. Quit f**king around in the street and get organized! Matters of national import are never decided in the middle of public streets. They are debated and implemented in the halls of power by elected officials.

Further, we must be wary of other members of Trump's party who will attempt to paint themselves as kinder, more compassionate alternatives to the MAGA minions while still pushing the same dour vision of winner-take-all economic exploitation and calculated muzzling of free speech: The "bad cops" are out in force now, so the "good cops" can't be far behind.

What remains to be done, then, is to identify and imagine the work that is actually required to get stability and sustainability within reach of the newly disinherited majority. It will not be easy. The country is exhausted, chronically ill, and under direct assault from those who would lead them. Yet these are the conditions from which great transformations become possible. Collectively, we must reveal the secret of socialism's potential: to implement a political system which truly champions the needs of ordinary people instead of manufacturing a dystopia according to the exacting specifications of captains of industry.

The choice could not be more stark, and there is now no more room for error on the part of the public. I exhort you to choose wisely!

Let's make a country 'by the people, for the people' a reality again!

The Republican death march

I note with interest that no political, religious, economic or social organization was able to prevent the rapid deployment of armed and deadly shock troops throughout major American cities: hastily hired thugs that are only too keen to shred the Constitution and trample on the rights of citizens and human beings on the orders of their shameless, thoroughly unhinged and power-mad dictator.

Just as in the past, a democratically elected despot has seized the machinery of government in order to twist its various functions according to his crazed ambition, which seemingly knows no bounds. Whereas in a true democracy leaders use the power of their office to advance goals in line with the general good, perhaps only mildly inconveniencing one or another group when no other alternative is available, in an autocratic regime all decisions are ultimately made by and for the autocrat, often on whim, and without any consideration for the welfare of the population served.

That is what we are witnessing today in the streets of this country. We are witnessing the consolidation of unchecked power in the hands of an unelected minority; an unholy alliance of freelance overlords who sailed in under the radar when the rest of the country was too busy fretting over various aspects of the private lives of others instead of keeping a watchful eye on the affairs of state. In a culture obsessed with image and bluster, it was relatively easy for Republicans to install their puppet dictator and ram their blatantly authoritarian, anti-democratic agenda through: they simply lied better than their opponents, many of whom probably never considered that they might some day share a chamber with the disgraced, looming hulk of a once legitimate political party completely overrun with fulsome demagogues and feckless boot lickers.

I'm on Bluesky :)(:

 https://bsky.app/profile/dsbarnett.bsky.social

Credit where credit is new

I'd just like to take the opportunity to thank the British music press, especially Mixcloud, for everything they've done for me up to this point. Changing their subscription policies just when I start heating up... totally ignoring authentic genius in favor of bland conformist drivel...   What can I say, you guys are incredible. Happy New Year, all!

'Plugged in'

Listening to Live at the Plugged Nickel over the weekend, I found myself inescapably curious about how an audience might react to such a performance today. (For the historically curious, see this 2016 entry from saxophonist Adam Melville regarding the whereabouts of the long-since-shuttered Plugged Nickel nightclub in Chicago. Spoiler: It was in Old Town and is now a garden center!). Would they shower it with accolades, as many contemporary and near-contemporary writers did; a reaction amply justified, to be sure? How many would be drawn in to the rich layers of jazz history being gleefully, exhuberantly deconstructed and reconstructed in real time by what were already becoming recognized as leading voices in an emerging ensemble of young artists from the Davis roster that would go on to redefine the boundaries of not only jazz but popular music as well? Would they be along for the ride? 

Or might they be inclined to dismiss it, rejecting its strident unorthodoxy or, so much the worse, merely tolerate it while failing to appreciate its finer virtues?

"too experimental... sort of unfocused... Really good, but some of the solos went on a bit too long..."

Some, perhaps entirely unfamiliar with the contours of mid-century modernism, may suspect that it was the work of borderline amateurs, borderline personalities... possibly even both.

That it is a challenging listen is difficult to deny, if only for the volatile nature of the on-location recording. Glasses clink, cash registers "ching" in the background as club patrons buy drinks and chatter; even the odd wiseguy comment from one of those lucky enough to be in attendance variously interrupt these historic proceedings. And yet, on the stage, genuine magic is unfolding before them. Like a glittering Pandora's Box of panchromatic gloss, the Quintet seemingly spontaneously rearrange the familiar and beloved themes of 20th century standards into the stretched and stylized geometric abstractions of high modernism. A language born of busy urban spaces, catapulting and eccentric mechanical rhythms against a backdrop of tower blocks with antennas and power lines floating, barely anchored, through the shuddering air above the streets, like the razor-thin buttresses of some imaginary cathedral made of electricity and wire. A true 'high wire' act from start to finish.

Maybe Wayne Shorter (RIP) was riffing on the configuration of birds that happened to settle momentarily, like dots on a page, on those high wires strung along the 'El'evated tracks near Sedgewick, or maybe he and the others were channeling the infinite permutations of set theory in material form: a feat usually reserved for Douglas Adams novels and (presumably) early episodes of Star Trek. Whatever the case, the band cooks every bit as hard as Davis' bop era groups, with a similarly inventive yet substantively distinct improvisational regimen, one based firmly on an abstract expressionist ethos that isn't afraid to throw a bit of paint around in the service of style.

It's such a storied success that it's easy to forget, in this gentrified era, the intense interest radically new and exciting musical developments such as these generated in audiences at the time. When, by now, many similar avenues and new possibilities have been explored, it becomes incumbent to reimagine a radical musical program of similar ambition in the context of our own era. What might that sound like? Once again, would audiences be up for it? I tend to think they would, considering the relentlessly "packaged" cool blaring from every corner of corporate real estate nowadays. Or have today's youth been so bamboozled and propagandized by mainstream media that they just wouldn't tolerate anyone actually improvising on an instrument at them anymore? I certainly hope there is yet room for the practice somewhere in the world, and not only in the service of tradition.

EVERYwhere man

And what of the world in which everything is labelled, everyone clearly identifies themselves according to role, rank, outlook; all locations mapped, scoped, designated? 

Is it a world in which anything really happens?

In the Mud

The interchangeability of meshing parts: first people thought the universe was created for them. Only later did it become apparent that we had developed as something of an afterthought, arising with a sudden metabolic flourish upon ages and ages of mud. 

It's a pity, then, that people don't often tend to find mud, or its planetary antecedents, more interesting, or hold it in any great esteem.

 ... uh, these people behind me... (gestures vaguely to the side)... by which I am essentially referring to myself, and one other person... or maybe his friends when he's on vacation, or his nephew if he's out golfing with me... [muted commotion - "upside down!"... "sorry, wrong slide" ... "it was a shame about the weather!" - suppressed laughter from the gallery] ... will be running the country of Venezuela...

Moving parts

The vast range of failure modes of the machine, the limitless permutations of oblivion, seem to mirror the endless variety of uninhabited and uninhabitable worlds studding the cosmos...

you're a dot

within a dot

within another dot

with nothing but dots

for your i's

Cut rate snazzz bins 99 $cents on the dollar... Digital jesus infrastructure got yer poodles in a twist... innersense moan from Dracula's appendages...  wonder what brand of white light we'll find today