Dreams Into Lightning 2

Mad In America - Independence Day Post

"They keep sending our jobs away."

Here's a great song from the brother of an old friend of mine.

Troubled by the rising tied of offshoring around the country musician and CSEA Local 2001 member Steve Dube put pen to paper and wrote an anthem called “Mad in America” for his band ETX.

[Dube]: The song was written as a protest basically, just because of all of the engineering and IT jobs going away.

Dube is now trying to bring that protest via song to music lovers everywhere by landing on ITunes top 100 on July 4. How? Dube is calling on everyone to log into their ITunes player on the Independence Day holiday and download the song. If enough people do it, the song should hypothetically find a place among the Avril Lavignes and Fall Out Boys of the world.

[Dube2]: We’d like to just get a grassroots effort going where the song could become like an anthem for American workers just to show Washington in an election year that we don’t want the middle class to go away and we want jobs in the United States.

I've just downloaded the song to iTunes and I can personally and enthusiastically recommend it. "Mad in America" raises important questions about globalization and the outsourcing of American jobs. And it's a great song, too.

My friend Chuck comes from a family of patriots and is also a musician, having performed with Leigh Gregory. Go have a listen to Mad in America by ETx - and you can download the whole thing for just 99 cents.

On Reading American History

For a while now, I've been wanting to fill the gaps left in my knowledge by the lack of any serious education in history in the public schools of the 1970s. Recently I began taking steps to correct that; of course the study of history is a lifelong undertaking. Here are some initial thoughts on the American History books I've been reading.

The books I've been reading on American history are:

Hugh Brogan - The Penguin History of the United States
Paul Johnson - A History of the American People
Schweikart and Allen - A Patriot's History of the United States
Winston Churchill - The Great Republic

Also, scored the beautiful two-volume seventh edition of "Growth of the American Republic" by Samuel Eliot Morison et al.

Of the four single-volume histories, two are by Americans and two by Brits; Brogan is the lone liberal of the group. It's interesting to cross-reference between the books and compare accounts and interpretations of each event. I started with the Revolution and went straight through to the present day (except in Churchill's book, which ends with WWII). This week I'm going to go back and review, and highlight certain key areas that are of interest to me, for example the birth of the Progressive movement of about a hundred years ago - the forerunner of modern liberalism as we now know it.

Hugh Brogan's book is readable, informative, and fun. It's great to read if you want the viewpoint of an articulate, intelligent liberal in the 1970s era. He is laudably anti-Communist, but (I think) astonishingly naive about the Soviet Union's intentions. He falls back on the diversion that (paraphrasing) "Russia and China were never a monolithic bloc the way the scaremongers thought they were" - exactly as so many libs do today about the Arab/islamist regimes. Brogan also delivers a stinging condemnation of pre-WWII pacifism; but his comments on the State of Israel (near the bottom of page 622) will make you sit up and say "Huh?"

Paul Johnson is the British Conservative MP who wrote "A History of the Jews", and his history of the US is definitely pro-American. Johnson has a very illuminating section on the Progressive movement of the early 20th century, and (on page 636) a highly informative explanation of the change from small-government liberalism (which saw big government as "a conspiracy to steal money from the hard-working population") to big-government liberalism (which "began to see a strong federal government ... as the defender of the ordinary man and woman against the excesses of corporate power"). Only criticism of Johnson: way, waaaay too many statistics!

Both Johnson and Brogan stress the inherent danger of the myopic pre-WWII mindset of "neutrality" which refused to see nations in conflict as "aggressors" or "victims" but simply, and without distinction, as "belligerents". Moral relativism, anyone?

Schweikart's book is great. It was written explicitly as a conservative history of the US, and as a rebuttal to Zinn (the authors deny that last bit, but I think it's obvious). The authors are critical of American policy when it's appropriate, and devote a great deal of space to the civil rights movement. They have a great admiration for Theodore Roosevelt, despite his Progressive ways. They're sharply critical of Eisenhower, "hardly in the vanguard of civil rights", whom they blame for "cementing the view among black politicians that their only source of support was the Democratic Party." The section on the radicalization of the campus is invaluable. My only issue with "Patriot's History" is that I think the authors offer too many opinions as "fact". But there are plenty of facts there, and facts are what's been missing from the teaching of American history for much too long.

Howard Zinn's book "A People's History of the United States" was a success when it came out, and it sold well in paperback - and I can now see dozens of used copies of Zinn sitting on the shelves of Powell's (including, possibly, my own). I think Zinn's book was successful, not because Americans were looking for a left-wing history of their country, but because they were starved for any book on their country's history that promised to be readable and informative.

I'm looking forward to the release of the paperback edition of "Patriot's History", and I'm betting it will sell well, too.

Support Israeli Art

DiL can't resist this opportunity to tell you about Israeli artist Paula Gaon, who's having an online exhibition at ArtLand Pro. (Full disclosure: Paula is an old friend from back in the day.) Don't miss her personal blog Beautiful and Fun Things.

Latin for Swiss

I've got to see this film:

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica will begin screening at film festivals worldwide starting in March, followed by cinema screenings across the US and Europe, and the DVD release ...

Go to the link for more modernist, sans-serif goodness.

Judith (to whom the grateful hat tip) has a post on it here. Be sure to follow her link to the clips - you may have to turn up the sound, but it's worth it.

For me, "Helvetica" will be a nostalgic trip back to the halcyon days of New Order and Peter Saville. Ohhh, I can't wait.

Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane has died.

Alice Coltrane, widow of the jazz saxophonist John Coltrane and the pianist in his later bands, who extended her musical searches into a vocation as a spiritual leader, died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 69.

BlogCritics:

Alice Coltrane was already an accomplished bop pianist when she married John Coltrane in 1965, having played under luminaries such as Barry Harris, Stan Getz, Terry Gibbs and Yusef Lateef. She served as John's pianist in his final year and a half, replacing McCoy Tyner in 1966.

Along with former bandmate Pharoah Sanders, she has done the most to carry and even expand JC's vision of spiritual, free form, Eastern mysticism music that sometimes went well beyond the normal boundaries of what was widely held as being "jazz". She didn't just stick with the piano, but also organ and later, synthesizers. She could also play a mean harp. 1970's Ptah the El Daoud was an early post-John high point for her, which demonstrated that the modal form of jazz championed by her late husband was not quite yet exhausted for ideas.

Alice Coltrane homepage.

Remarks. Jazz was always an acquired taste for me, to the extent that I acquired it at all. Of the jazz classics, I learned to love John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Thelonious Monk, but it took time to adapt my ears to their abstract sounds. (An exception was John Coltrane's "Blue Train", which I liked instantly.)

Alice Coltrane, though, was another matter. She seemed to be, literally, sui generis - a musical genre all her own. As a teenager in the 1970s my tastes tended toward the eclectic - Yes, Ravi Shankar, and Beethoven. When I discovered Alice Coltrane years later, her music seemed to pick up where progressive rock left off - where Rick Wakeman had provided excitement, Alice Coltrane added subtlety and grace.

I own most of Alice Coltrane's recordings, and if you haven't listened to her music I encourage you to experience it for yourself. My personal favorite (among many) is "Jagadishwar" from Translinear Light; it's probably my single favorite instrumental in contemporary music. Alice won't see the release of her forthcoming album Sacred Language of Ascension but you can be sure I won't miss it.

Alice Coltrane's passing is our loss. Rest in peace, Turiyasangitananda.

James Brown Remembered

Jeremayakovka:

James Brown was one of those explosive performer-personalities who seemed as if he would go on and on ... and on. And on.... You know what I mean: as if he were born with a microphone in his mouth and from Day One lay in a cradle shaped like an amp. The proper word for all this is, is it not?, "soul."

JMK knew but little about James Brown, but this I knew and still know: in your lifetime, Gentle Reader, you must listen (all the way through) to Love, Power, Peace: James Brown Live at the Olympia, Paris, 1971 [click it for samples]. LPP is the one James Brown album I have and it is sooo good. For starters, one standout track is a completely overdrive version of "Sex Machine": I want to get up and do my thing! Don't we all.

But, man, what cuts deepest on this album, every time, is "Georgia on My Mind." ...

Cobb:

I heard an NPR interview with James Brown a couple years ago when he was making what appeared to be his fifth or sixth 'comeback'. He impressed me as one of the last Americans who was able to sell his genius without formalism.

Listening to him speak I realized at once that he was illiterate in a literal sense - unable to articulate his own meaning outside of his gift. He spoke of music in abstracts inappreciable to non-adepts. I got the feeling just listening to him that he was completely original in every way and you could tell that there was something deep in him that he never had to change for anyone. He was a self-actualized man in ways that just captivated everyone, because society tells us that such men don't exist. If the man wrote in hyroglyphics or described colors to sightless people it wouldn't surprise me a bit. James had something of an alien mind, his musical creation and his creation of himself into the hardest working man in show business was a kind of inevitability. I think of him as a giant pearl with some incredibly strange, dense and oddly shaped object as its center of gravity. You could never predict how he would roll, but whenever he did it was a rhythmic glowing miracle. All you can do is stare.

They called him the Godfather of Soul. James Brown was more like the Wormhole of Rhythm. Nothing could get close to him without being sucked into his powerful grooves. He punctuates his music with an energy that resists passive listening. You can't just appreciate James Brown music. You have to decide to either get into the groove or get out of the room. There are three transcendent elements to James Brown. The groove, the bridge and the break. Now I'm going to be like James and not even going to try to describe them. They are what they are. You just have to listen to the man.

My favorite James Brown song? That would have to be Hot Pants. It's the one that connected with me on the subconscious level. Like voodoo on the adolescent mind ...

Dubowski to Screen Gay Muslim Film "In the Name of Allah"

NewsMax:

A new documentary exploring the lives of gay Muslims could soon set off another round of violent protests in the Middle East.

The film’s producer, Sandi Dubowski, has promised to submit his movie to all the major film festivals of the Muslim and Western worlds. And even if it is rejected, he told Variety magazine, "We’ll find ways of screening it in every Muslim nation, even if it’s underground.”

The film, titled "In the Name of Allah,” will give viewers a glimpse of the Muslim world from a gay, lesbian, and transgender perspective.

(Hat tip: Jeremayakovka, via e-mail.) Dubowski previously produced "Trembling Before G-d" which explored the lives of lesbian and gay Orthodox Jews.

Support the new documentary film "In the Name of Allah".

Related:

Al-Fatiha: Gay Muslims.

Irshad Manji: Muslim Refusenik.

UPDATE: Please visit JMK's comments for more info!

Book Meme

Tagged by: Jeremayakovka

1. One book that changed your life

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Halakhic Man

This one book changed my entire way of thinking about Orthodox Judaism and completely demolished the stereotypes I'd been taught by the liberal Jewish world.

- and -

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

This book helped me to come to terms with my dysfunctional family background. Macon ("Milkman") Dead has to deal with a lot of tough problems, including external oppression (from a racist society) and internal oppression (from within the family). He learns to liberate himself by understanding the mistakes his parents made - and by accepting the magical secret that they passed on to him. I'm planning to write a post on SoS one of these days.

2. One book you have read more than once

Daniel Pinkwater, Lizard Music

This book is simply sublime.

3. One book you would want on a desert island

Samuel R. Delany, Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand

4. One book that made you laugh

Alison Bechdel, Dykes to Watch Out For (the series)

5. One book that made you cry

David Grossman, See Under: Love (tr. by Betsy Rosenberg)

-and-

Audre Lorde, The Complete Poems

6. One book you wish had been written

Stephanie McLintock, The First Half: My Life and Works at Age 42

If only.

- also -

Tammy Bruce, Mary Cheney, and Irshad Manji, GWOT: The Gay War On Terror; Why the Queer Community Must Unite Against Islamic Fascism

I'm thinking of using that for a post title.

7. One book you wish had never been written

Sayyid Qutb, the complete works

8. One book you're currently reading

Bernard Lewis, The Middle East
Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics

9. One book you've been meaning to read

Stephen Wolfram, The Mathematica Book

A tragic update: David Grossman's son Uri has just been reported killed.

Syd Barrett has died.

The bad news comes via Mizalaina on the LJ side of the house.

Bloomberg UK:

July 11 (Bloomberg) -- Roger Keith ``Syd'' Barrett, a founding member of British rock band Pink Floyd, has died from symptoms related to diabetes, a spokesman for the band said today.

Barrett, who was 60, died on July 7 at his home in Cambridgeshire, England, Doug Wright said in a phone interview. ``The other members of the band will be giving their own statements shortly,'' he added.

Barrett, better know by his nickname ``Syd,'' left Pink Floyd in 1968 just before the band achieved worldwide success. Having founded the band with friend Roger Waters in 1965, Barrett embarked on a solo career instead.

Pink Floyd's former lead singer released two albums ``The Madcap Laughs'' and ``Barrett'' but retreated to his home where he lived as a recluse until his death after suffering a well- publicized breakdown that had been triggered by his usage of the psychedelic drug LSD. ...

NME:

Pink Floyd legend Syd Barrett has died at his Cambridgeshire home.

The singer, 60, who suffered from an LSD-induced breakdown while at the peak of his career in the Sixties, died last Friday (July 7). It has been reported that he died from complications related to diabetes, however, other reports suggest the cause of death was cancer.

A statement from Pink Floyd said: "The band are naturally very upset and sad to learn of Syd Barrett's death.

"Syd was the guiding light of the early band line-up and leaves a legacy which continues to inspire."

His brother Alan confirmed his death earlier today (July 11), saying: "He died peacefully at home. There will be a private family funeral in the next few days."

'Syd' Barrett was born Roger Keith Barrett in Cambridge on January 6, 1946, the youngest of five children. A keen musician from an early age, he acquired the nickname which became his most prominent moniker aged 15, a reference to another Cambridge-based musician, also named Sid Barrett. ...

Syd Barrett archives.

Dolly Rocker: Syd Barrett fanpage.

Remarks. Count me among the legions of fans who'll miss Syd Barrett, even though he retired from the music scene long ago. I was a huge Pink Floyd fan, although my enthusiasm for Floyd started to decline around the time of "The Wall". (Is their music getting really lame, I wondered, or is it just me getting old? I mean, I'm already out of high school ...)

Barrett's eccentric solo work was, of course, entirely sui generis. I got a kick out of "Octopus" but was moved to tears by his setting of James Joyce's "Goldenhair". The story of his mental breakdown had a certain romantic, adolescent appeal, I suppose, but I would have preferred that he kept his marbles and stayed in the studio.

Is it better to burn out, or to fade away? Personally, I don't recommend either. Life is hard, but we need each other.

When I woke up today and you weren't there to play then I wanted to be with you when you showed me your eyes whispered love at the skies then I wanted to stay with you inside me I feel alone and unreal ...

United 93: A Walk-On Part in the War

United 93 doesn't have a "plot" or "characters" in the conventional sense. Most of the characters are never named. Only one that I noticed - Ben Sliney - is ever identified by first and last name. Two we recognize - Mark Bingham and Todd Beamer - but most are simply there. They appear onscreen as people appear to us in life, without introduction or fanfare.

Many of the surviving characters are played by their real-life counterparts. Look at the cast list and the first thing you will notice, after the absence of "superstars", is the number of roles identified as "Himself/Herself". Many others are known only by their role titles, "Boston 5", "Herndon 1", "Cleveland Supervisor".

It is a cast of walk-ons - again, just as in life. And yet paradoxically, it's a movie about ordinary people who become actors: not "actors" in the sense of performers, but actors in the original sense - people who take action.

The movie does not try to "explain" September 11. It does not bother to fill you in on what everybody knows, because you already know it. It's very much like the classic horror device, where you (the viewer) know the danger awaiting the characters, but the characters themselves are blissfully ignorant. In other words, it is simply excruciating.

If you are vulnerable to motion sickness, you should be warned that the film employs a "nervous camera" style. A friend commented that this seemed overdone, in contrast to an actual "impromptu documentary" filmed by a live camera crew that happened to be on the scene on 9/11; the cameras in the real documentary were steadier.

But "United 93" is not a documentary, not even a "faux documentary". It is a movie made (necessarily, as all movies are) by people with cameras. It is not meant to simulate a fictional documentary made by fictional people with cameras; it's meant to put you in the middle of the action. So I believe the "nervous camera" is meant to invoke, not the unsteady hand of an anxious cameraman, but the restless gaze of the human eye.

I am one of Judith's "Venus people". I like relationship films. I cry in movies. (I even cry during "Xena".) I cried in "United 93" because it is a movie full of ending relationships. To say that there is "no happy ending" doesn't begin to tell it. There is not one tragedy but many: the sundering of romances we have not seen develop, the bereavement of families we've never met, the goodbyes to people we will never know. There is no redeeming moment at the end; no "boy gets girl"; no tender embrace amid the smouldering rubble, pregnant with the hope of life renewed. No. There is only the spinning ground and the silent blackness.

Did I give away the ending? But you already knew how it would end.