Had a few weeks of heavy work (eh, freelancing), and am now down south in Florida for a visit. Today spent the afternoon on an airboat poking around the Homosassa River, seeing the inlets and islands out around that patch of the Gulf Coast.
Saturday, April 19, 2014
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
Russia as it was, as it will be
I've been looking at that last post above, and how much things have changed since then. It's been an amazing, and profoundly depressing few weeks for those of us who have an interest in Russia and its future. I've been paralyzed over how to begin to make sense of all this here, my attitude and fears about what's happening keep changing — becoming reliably more bleak.
There has been a lot of interesting commentary about all this. I think Julia Ioffe at the New Republic did the best job of capturing just how sad it has been to watch from afar this descent into madness:
There has been a lot of interesting commentary about all this. I think Julia Ioffe at the New Republic did the best job of capturing just how sad it has been to watch from afar this descent into madness:
"Westerners rightly know Russia as a font of absurdity, but lately, it’s been hard to keep up: I’ve been trying to write this post for a solid week now, and have been constantly derailed by the increasingly bizarre and worrying developments coming from the Trans-Eurasian Development Belt."She ticks off some of the nonsense. The absurdities issued by Kremlin flunkeys in the Duma, the belligerent posturing of the neckless tough guys that dominate the Russian conversation, the inability to discern just where all this ends.
"Here’s what’s scary about this: this is all being done, according to various reports, without any consultation with anyone outside Putin’s shrinking inner circle of old KGB spooks. The economic elites most likely to suffer from a plummeting ruble and sanctions have been shut out of the decision-making process. This is all about intangibles, the things that reason can't hook, the things impervious to logic and reasoning and even the cynical algebra of geopolitical interests. This is about pride and values and the Trans-Eurasian Development Belt.
And, yes, all of this is familiar and increasingly terrifying, but to whom? To you and me and an increasingly besieged island of Moscow liberals? Because, terrifyingly, familiarly, all of this works. The method has been tried many times, and it is true: Putin’s approval ratings have grown to their highest level in three years."For 15 years, Putin in plain sight wrote the blueprint and assembled an apparatus for a new kind of autocratic oppression. And now we're watching it click and whir into life.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Power stupefies
Watching events unfold in the Ukraine over the past few days I've been working over in my head a single question: Was there a specific moment in the last few years when former President Viktor Yanukovich said to himself, "Screw it, I'm going to go ahead and put in the pirate ship-themed dining room and start a private zoo. There's no way that could possibly come back to haunt me."
It is a moldy old saying that power corrupts, when it seems more precisely that power stupefies. Something about being a ruling oligarch makes you think there's no way you could ever be knocked off, and looking from afar, it is hard to believe anyone could be that deluded. It is probably a bit like winning lottery — everyone is convinced they aren't the guy who is going to go bankrupt in a few years after they win, but it keeps happening over and over again.
The Ukraine is a great case study in the ways things just don't change, and how patterns keep repeating in new and wonderful ways. So I watch thing with a very cynical eye, and chortle when I hear commentators in our stunningly earnest and ignorant American media declare, "Well Joe, I tell ya all this started in the 1930s with Stalin." (Only Americans are young enough at heart to say things like that).
I'm incredibly pessimistic about things because I've been following things there closely, and I remember the Orange Revolution. That last outpouring of popular unrest in the Ukraine was enough to scare Russia to its core, and convince Americans that the Ukraine was all set for the future and didn't need anymore attention. But as events unfolded, the new power structure revealed itself very quickly to be just as venal and greedy as the last one. To say, "they blew it" is an understatement. So the stunning events of last weekend were a real downer. I wish it were possible for the public persona of Yulia Tymoshenko to immediate skip from her heroic release from prison and go straight to the cheesy "Evita" theater spectacle featuring her hairdo. Too bad she's going to insist on proving how corrupt she is all over again — and perhaps someday the masses can take selfies in her gold-plated hot tub or with her vintage car collection.
With leaders like these there's not a lot to hope for. Yanukovich was a singular case, such a clown that even Russian is embarrassed to know him (I sincerely hope we someday find out that his tragicomic flight from the mobs included him dressing up as a nun and slipping out a hotel kitchen). But the opposition is reduced to Tymoshenko's flunkies, some nationalist groups that remind you just how scary the far right is in central and eastern Europe, and a celebrity boxer. If only it were just as easy as deciding between owing your soul to Russian oligarch or the German bankers.
The powerful act stupid because they don't believe things will change. At that level, you have to create such world views or you don't function. And I think the rest of us feel it too. All through last week, when the streets were on fire and the bodies were stacking up in the hotel lobbies, it felt like that feeling amped up to 11. How could this possibly end? how could anything change?
And then on the weekend, it did. Everything we will hear in the coming months will suggest that it was the only outcome possible, but of course it wasn't, and it certainly never felt that way as it happened. Scenes feel like they'll go on forever until they don't. Growing up I didn't believe in the possibility of a generation defining event like Pearl Harbor — I thought that right up to Sept. 10, 2011. It always comes as a surprise. Vladimir Putin and Jamie Dimon take note.
It is a moldy old saying that power corrupts, when it seems more precisely that power stupefies. Something about being a ruling oligarch makes you think there's no way you could ever be knocked off, and looking from afar, it is hard to believe anyone could be that deluded. It is probably a bit like winning lottery — everyone is convinced they aren't the guy who is going to go bankrupt in a few years after they win, but it keeps happening over and over again.
The Ukraine is a great case study in the ways things just don't change, and how patterns keep repeating in new and wonderful ways. So I watch thing with a very cynical eye, and chortle when I hear commentators in our stunningly earnest and ignorant American media declare, "Well Joe, I tell ya all this started in the 1930s with Stalin." (Only Americans are young enough at heart to say things like that).
I'm incredibly pessimistic about things because I've been following things there closely, and I remember the Orange Revolution. That last outpouring of popular unrest in the Ukraine was enough to scare Russia to its core, and convince Americans that the Ukraine was all set for the future and didn't need anymore attention. But as events unfolded, the new power structure revealed itself very quickly to be just as venal and greedy as the last one. To say, "they blew it" is an understatement. So the stunning events of last weekend were a real downer. I wish it were possible for the public persona of Yulia Tymoshenko to immediate skip from her heroic release from prison and go straight to the cheesy "Evita" theater spectacle featuring her hairdo. Too bad she's going to insist on proving how corrupt she is all over again — and perhaps someday the masses can take selfies in her gold-plated hot tub or with her vintage car collection.
With leaders like these there's not a lot to hope for. Yanukovich was a singular case, such a clown that even Russian is embarrassed to know him (I sincerely hope we someday find out that his tragicomic flight from the mobs included him dressing up as a nun and slipping out a hotel kitchen). But the opposition is reduced to Tymoshenko's flunkies, some nationalist groups that remind you just how scary the far right is in central and eastern Europe, and a celebrity boxer. If only it were just as easy as deciding between owing your soul to Russian oligarch or the German bankers.
The powerful act stupid because they don't believe things will change. At that level, you have to create such world views or you don't function. And I think the rest of us feel it too. All through last week, when the streets were on fire and the bodies were stacking up in the hotel lobbies, it felt like that feeling amped up to 11. How could this possibly end? how could anything change?
And then on the weekend, it did. Everything we will hear in the coming months will suggest that it was the only outcome possible, but of course it wasn't, and it certainly never felt that way as it happened. Scenes feel like they'll go on forever until they don't. Growing up I didn't believe in the possibility of a generation defining event like Pearl Harbor — I thought that right up to Sept. 10, 2011. It always comes as a surprise. Vladimir Putin and Jamie Dimon take note.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
'She should just talk'
I have two thoughts about the sudden and sad passing of poet and writer Maggie Estep. I can't admit to having been a particular fan, but for those few years in the 90s, if you were an English major, you pretty much had to have an opinion about her and the entire downtown Gen X poetry slam thing.
First, if I knew back then just how fickle, fleeting, and rare pop culture's interest in poetry was going to be, I wouldn't have spent quite so much time making fun of it. Looking back, it's incredibly hard to believe that a) MTV was once a cutting edge and trend-setting cultural institution, and b) had a more than passing interest in the doings of Lower East Side poets.
While it was happening, while poets were appearing on television channels aimed at cool young people, I thought the barbarians were at the gates. To me, poetry was a Very Serious Thing. Artists like Maggie Estep were not only misappropriating the legacy of the Beat Generation, but were making poetry shallow, silly and — ugh — popular. Sure, it didn't last, but I would love to know how many readers and writers she inspired with her work. I can begrudge now that what she was doing was interesting in its engagement with technology, and awareness of the collision of cultures that the media environment at the time introduced to one another. And I think it was brave, in the sense that she had to put up with snobs like me laughing up our sleeves (but despite admitting all that, the weird cadences of "slam poetry" still drive me straight up the wall).
The second thing is that I'm grateful I got to spend a few minutes with that famous Beavis & Butthead clip, which Estep's obits note was one of the biggest audiences her work had. It's funny what happens when you grow up. In high school and college, I used to love the cartoons and put up with the commentary on videos. Now that you can watch the videos online, and the commentary pieces are unavailable because of copyright baloney, I realize just how absurdly insightful and hilarious those parts were. What I wouldn't give to find somewhere on the internet the original, unedited B&B's of my youth!
First, if I knew back then just how fickle, fleeting, and rare pop culture's interest in poetry was going to be, I wouldn't have spent quite so much time making fun of it. Looking back, it's incredibly hard to believe that a) MTV was once a cutting edge and trend-setting cultural institution, and b) had a more than passing interest in the doings of Lower East Side poets.
While it was happening, while poets were appearing on television channels aimed at cool young people, I thought the barbarians were at the gates. To me, poetry was a Very Serious Thing. Artists like Maggie Estep were not only misappropriating the legacy of the Beat Generation, but were making poetry shallow, silly and — ugh — popular. Sure, it didn't last, but I would love to know how many readers and writers she inspired with her work. I can begrudge now that what she was doing was interesting in its engagement with technology, and awareness of the collision of cultures that the media environment at the time introduced to one another. And I think it was brave, in the sense that she had to put up with snobs like me laughing up our sleeves (but despite admitting all that, the weird cadences of "slam poetry" still drive me straight up the wall).
The second thing is that I'm grateful I got to spend a few minutes with that famous Beavis & Butthead clip, which Estep's obits note was one of the biggest audiences her work had. It's funny what happens when you grow up. In high school and college, I used to love the cartoons and put up with the commentary on videos. Now that you can watch the videos online, and the commentary pieces are unavailable because of copyright baloney, I realize just how absurdly insightful and hilarious those parts were. What I wouldn't give to find somewhere on the internet the original, unedited B&B's of my youth!
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Where Amiri Baraka began
When I heard about the death of Amiri Baraka this month, a throwaway line about him from my favorite jumped to mind. In a funny way, it captured a moment in American literature, the kind of place that New York was in the 50s and 60s and would never be again, when it was a watershed for thousands of ideas and schools of thought. The rest of Baraka's career is one path, but a pretty narrow one considering where he started.
To put Baraka's life and work into perspective, you probably couldn't do any better than Questlove, who wrote a perceptive appreciation of the man in the Times. He described the time the Roots worked with him on a project:
And I agree with all that about making language mean something. There are a lot of earnest, Dead Poets Society sort of things I could say. Embarrassing things like: poetry is a thing that brings us together as a community, it is the embodiment of a higher sort of communication that embraces emotions and instincts, as well as the genius of language with its music, beauty, and freedom. It always fails when it stoops to division and separation — which is why "Somebody Blew Up America?" is a kind of crime for just being a monumentally shitty poem.
I've always wanted to think that at some level he knew better. That he remembered when he was young perhaps touched with a little optimism to go along with his emerging talent.
That throwaway line I'm thinking about comes from Frank O'Hara and his (perhaps?) satirical manifesto, "Personism." His mock movement "was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person."
It's a very simple idea, two friends having lunch together, friends from wildly different backgrounds or race, class, and sexuality who were connected by their common lot as artists. That "by the way" is key: it could have been Roi, if circumstances had allowed, and it's no big deal one way or another. He was accepted for who he was, but he turned his back on it. And his work suffered badly because of it.
To put Baraka's life and work into perspective, you probably couldn't do any better than Questlove, who wrote a perceptive appreciation of the man in the Times. He described the time the Roots worked with him on a project:
We were at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, and Mr. Baraka came in to add his vocals, which consisted of reading a poem he had written, “Something in the Way of Things (In Town).” I listened to the track again Friday, after he died, and I hear so many things hiding in the corners of the poem and his performance of it. There are traces of early poetry mentors like Charles Olson, there’s a little William S. Burroughs, there’s a reminder of how he opened the door for poetry to speech to recording long before the Last Poets or Gil Scott-Heron. There’s a devotion to making language mean something, even if — especially if — that something isn’t safe and preapproved.
Mr. Baraka got himself into trouble sometimes with the things he said, but then he got himself out, too, and it wasn’t his fault if you decided to pay attention only to the first part. He had an unshakable devotion to change, even if his ideas were imperfect. That was what kept him committed to refinement and improvement, both within and outside himself.That's a remarkable swirl of influences and ideas. And I respect Questlove's effort to explain rather than glide over some of the more problematic parts of his bio. I'm not sold on it — you are responsible for your words, and deserve to be judged by them. Baraka's reprehensible Sept. 11 poem is a poisonous stew of paranoia, ignorance, and laziness. I'm a free speech absolutist, so I don't agree with the silencing hatred the poem met, but as a reader and a citizen… I mean, if you are going to behave like an anti-Semitic fool in public, I'll draw my own conclusions.
And I agree with all that about making language mean something. There are a lot of earnest, Dead Poets Society sort of things I could say. Embarrassing things like: poetry is a thing that brings us together as a community, it is the embodiment of a higher sort of communication that embraces emotions and instincts, as well as the genius of language with its music, beauty, and freedom. It always fails when it stoops to division and separation — which is why "Somebody Blew Up America?" is a kind of crime for just being a monumentally shitty poem.
I've always wanted to think that at some level he knew better. That he remembered when he was young perhaps touched with a little optimism to go along with his emerging talent.
That throwaway line I'm thinking about comes from Frank O'Hara and his (perhaps?) satirical manifesto, "Personism." His mock movement "was founded by me after lunch with LeRoi Jones on August 27, 1959, a day in which I was in love with someone (not Roi, by the way, a blond). I went back to work and wrote a poem for this person."
It's a very simple idea, two friends having lunch together, friends from wildly different backgrounds or race, class, and sexuality who were connected by their common lot as artists. That "by the way" is key: it could have been Roi, if circumstances had allowed, and it's no big deal one way or another. He was accepted for who he was, but he turned his back on it. And his work suffered badly because of it.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
My favorite music of 2013
I suppose, to the extent that I "resolve" anything anymore, I'd like to pay more attention to the blog because…. well, someone ought to. So with that in mind, I found lying around my half-hearted list of best albums of 2013:
Things I really, really looked forward to and guess I like fine and all but… I like their other stuff so very much more…
The National, Trouble Will Find Me
Since High Violet is probably the best album to come out of the Great Recession, this was bound to disappoint a little. But good on them for staying in the right lane.
MGMT, MGMT
The first band of their generation that made me think the kids will be alright. But it seems they're in one of those "turning in on themselves" kinda moments. I can't wait until they come back!
Deerhunter, Monomania
I listened the heck out of Halcyon Digest, and they did such a good job exploring roots rock and melody etc. that it turned out to be a little boring.
David Bowie, The Next Day
It's exciting he's still doing important, quality stuff after all these years. But he already worked through this stuff on Hours…
Nick Cave, Push the Sky Away
Just another Nick Cave album (a very high compliment).
I had no idea there was a chance I'd like this, but go fig, here we are...
Queens of the Stone Age, …Like Clockwork
Yes! I do like guitars!
Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City
Those super-catchy, skittery rhythms from pretentious Columbia nerds used to really bug me. But it's weird how well they're growing up.
Daft Punk, Random Access Memories
Hearing Wilco cover "Get Lucky" at Solid Sound last summer sealed how fantastic a pop song they've created.
Lorde, Pure Heroin
That song about Maybachs is hard to get out of your head, and I hope the point hits home (not a chance).
Despite the hype, only a 'm'yeah, s'alright'
Savages, Silence Yourself
Not a great sign when I'm more impressed by the layout of their feature profile on Pitchfork.
Very nice, but are they trying too hard?:
Haim, Days Are Gone
Sounds like a rockin' Christine McVie solo album.
No idea why everyone like this so much:
Chvrches, The Bones of What You Believe
This is like an entire album of interstitial music from Girls.
My favorites of 2013
Speedy Ortiz, Major Arcana
And listen, this album was recorded in Easthampton, Massachusetts. I can't even process how mind-blowing that is to me. My head hurts.
Arcade Fire, Reflektor
Still the most ambitious, thoughtful, and inspired rock band working today. Hearing Winn Butler publicly chatter about how the album was conceptually inspired by Kierkegaard could be insanely obnoxious, but just makes me love them so much more.
Foxygen, We are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic
These doomed kids really made my summer. Great melodramatic, vague songs about youth, love, and hope. As catchy as the Kinks, as relevant as MGMT (a year or two ago). It's a shame those two didn't make sure that they liked each other before creating something this awesome and bursting with potential.
I'm with Everyone else on this... This was the Very Best Album of 2013:
Kanye West, Yeezus
I'll admit, I only really gave this a serious listen because Lou Reed told me to, and he never let me down. This is the first hip-hop album I listened to from start to finish — as in, sitting in a room with headphones on and my eyes closed — since Licensed to Ill. Sharp-edged, angry, hilarious, hurting, this album changed the way I think about an entire genre. And extra-bonus points for that long sample from Hungarian hard rock classic "Gyöngyhajú lány."
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
The new ICA in Boston
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| The new ICA on the waterfront, Nov. 22, 2013 |
I had once visited the ICA's former home, in a converted firehouse in Back Bay which it had quite clearly outgrown. But that it took so long to get its new facility says a lot about the politics of art funding around here. In the 80s and 90s, while MoCA was struggling through its long gestation, no institution complained louder and longer than ICA. The couldn't believe the state would spend tens of millions of dollars on a brand new contemporary art museum in the middle of nowhere.
Maybe they had a point, but since I live here in Berkshire County and not in Boston, I can't give it too much thought. Boston has a lot of cultural offerings and economic opportunities. We get the short end of the stick often enough — there are real reasons why in many ways we feel closer to New York than to Boston.
The new ICA, like MoCA, was built at at time when museums must be considered more than simply places to store art. Today, they have to be part of a broader economic development scheme, in their case an effort to bring something to the desolate stretch of waterfront between the Moakley Federal Courthouse and the cavernous new convention behemoth. It seems like that project is coming along in a rather fitful way. Walking to the are from South Station, it feels like lots of parking lots and glass towers, not like a neighborhood in any meaningful way. In a city with such a deep history, and with so many vibrant and ancient communities all around, the ICA finds itself anchoring the one part of Boston with no personality whatsoever.
The building itself is quite an achievement, in a very showy way. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, it shows off its engineering skill and cutting edginess every way it can, through its contours of glass, steel, and concrete. The effect can be disorienting — it feels to me like it was built upside down. Many of its enthusiasts talk about how open it is, how it interacts with the water in front of it. All true, I guess, but you might also note how noisy it is, and how many of the spaces don't make much sense. One of the weirder features is something called the "mediatheque," a long narrow pod emerging from the belly of the building which is filled with rows and rows of computers, and where visitors are invited to relax and watch videos and other content relative to the exhibits. That's alright, but scourge of concrete building, I couldn't help but notice the giant crack in one of the upper steps.
The building got me thinking about architecture in Boston, and led me to a strange realization: the much-maligned Boston City Hall might be the last truly brave and interesting thing built in that city. Partly that's for the simple reason that it came from a distinct school of thought, and had the guts to stick to it. Whatever would replace it — and the new mayor has already said he's open to the idea — would be timid, flashy, and as brave as an investment banker's new BMW. You only have to look around the Financial District from across the Fort Point Channel to see how dumb and bland things have gotten. One mediocre high-rise with a cheap gimmick feature next to another. And don't even get me started on the TD Bank Garden.
These are building that just do their job. And the job of the new ICA is to shout, "Look at the neat arty thing sitting over here!" And the exhibits on display didn't really convince me that any serious path-breaking work is going on. A retrospective of the work of Amy Sillman, which was entertaining, along with an obvious show of new work considering the boundaries of painting, and the work of a photographer who takes unflinching images of postindustrial society. In other words, nothing really surprising.
There is so much awesome stuff in Boston. A day at the Museum of Fine Art is as great an art experience as you can have in America. On my last trip, I paid my first visit to the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum, which boasts an astonishing collection hiding in a quirky setting (perhaps too quirky at times, but that's just me). Boston also has an amazing aquarium, a stupendous science museum, and a world class symphony. But contemporary art remains an afterthought.
Friday, December 6, 2013
My daughter's first Bruins game
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
How to explain the day John Kennedy died
It is still shocking how badly the Kennedy assassination traumatized us, how it launched millions of rounds of conspiracy theorizing, historical taxonomy, and sorrowful speculation about missing futures. And on this key anniversary, it feels as if all we can do is helplessly circle around the sadness at the heart of it all, about the event itself.
It is a thing that still lives and thrives in a fog of words, feelings, and memories. If we aren't careful, it can be a crutch of self-pity and misplaces frustration. And I think we need help thinking about what is important about it and what questions and challenges it raises that we still have to face. So if I can add my little bit, I'd point readers to something Daniel Schorr wrote in the New York Review of Books in October 1977 that shines through the event's aftermath like a light.
Schorr's essay, which is alas behind a archive paywall, is a patient and methodical effort to connect the investigations done by the Warren Commission in the aftermath of the tragedy to the work done in the mid-1970s as America sorted through the violence, horror, and shame of the 60s. Specifically, he dug through the findings of the Church Committee, which had hauled before the American people all the mischief and skullduggery its secret security services had carried themselves into. It was the kind of shocking and painful public reckoning that only a healthy democracy can live through, and people like me who remember it were in no way surprised by the recent NSA revelations, but have been horrified by our shrugging indifference to them.
Many of the things that Schorr explains in detail were new then but in the past decades have been well-digested and, sadly, forgotten. In particular, he looks at the CIA and the Mafia's efforts to turn back the Cuban revolution. It was both horrifying and plainly ridiculous:
See, what I'm really talking about is journalism, and how they can help fix a problem. So much of what a reporter can do is really just putting things in context, of explaining the history and the mechanics of a complicated thing in a simple way. And by doing so, he probably comes closest to finding a motivation than anyone else:
It is a thing that still lives and thrives in a fog of words, feelings, and memories. If we aren't careful, it can be a crutch of self-pity and misplaces frustration. And I think we need help thinking about what is important about it and what questions and challenges it raises that we still have to face. So if I can add my little bit, I'd point readers to something Daniel Schorr wrote in the New York Review of Books in October 1977 that shines through the event's aftermath like a light.
Schorr's essay, which is alas behind a archive paywall, is a patient and methodical effort to connect the investigations done by the Warren Commission in the aftermath of the tragedy to the work done in the mid-1970s as America sorted through the violence, horror, and shame of the 60s. Specifically, he dug through the findings of the Church Committee, which had hauled before the American people all the mischief and skullduggery its secret security services had carried themselves into. It was the kind of shocking and painful public reckoning that only a healthy democracy can live through, and people like me who remember it were in no way surprised by the recent NSA revelations, but have been horrified by our shrugging indifference to them.
Many of the things that Schorr explains in detail were new then but in the past decades have been well-digested and, sadly, forgotten. In particular, he looks at the CIA and the Mafia's efforts to turn back the Cuban revolution. It was both horrifying and plainly ridiculous:
"My favorite plot — nonlethal — was what someone in the CIA called “elimination by illumination.” It was dreamed up by General Edward Lansdale, Robert Kennedy’s coordinator for the hidden war against Castro. Never put into execution, the plan was to spread the word in Cuba of the imminent Second Coming of Christ, with the corollary message that Castro, the Antichrist, would have to go. At the appointed time, American submarines would surface off the coast, sending up star shells, which would presumably inspire the Cubans to rise up against Castro."And Schorr also casually hints at scandals that continue today. For example, that Bill Moyers, who makes a living as a self-righteous media scold and sanctimonious old fart, almost certainly knows way, way more than he's telling about some important things. Specifically, Schorr notes that Moyer, as a top LBJ aide, was part of the conversation about the effort in the days after the assassination to cut off speculation about motivations and any possibility of Communist involvement (that's in the Church Committee report). And so, until that man speaks — and real reporter Robert Caro has spent decades politely inviting him to do so — he's a fraud and anything else he has to say is bullshit.
See, what I'm really talking about is journalism, and how they can help fix a problem. So much of what a reporter can do is really just putting things in context, of explaining the history and the mechanics of a complicated thing in a simple way. And by doing so, he probably comes closest to finding a motivation than anyone else:
"Had the [Warren] commission not been so completely sidetracked from every Cuban lead, it might have found what this reporter was able to find—buried in the commission’s own files or later dug up in congressional investigations and from other sources.
Where the 'Castro revenge' theory had run aground was on the lack of evidence that Oswald had any contact with anyone who knew about the CIA’s secret plotting against the Cuban leader. But Oswald did not need to have such contact to reach the conclusion that Castro, his hero, was being threatened and that he, in turn, could become a hero in Cuba by responding to the threat."All the evidence is lying in plain sight; you don't need grassy knolls or magic bullets. Just the moral awareness of the irony of what had come back to haunt us:
"The possibility that Oswald acted on his own, inspired by Castro’s statement, cannot today be proved, but it has the elements of the fortuitous and the lunatic that sometimes govern history. The “conspiracy,” then, would have been a conspiracy of interlocking events—the incessant CIA plots to kill Castro, touching off a Castro warning, touching off something in the fevered mind of Lee Harvey Oswald.
It would be comforting to know that Oswald acted on his own—not as part of some dark left-wing or right-wing plot to strike down a president. It is less comforting to realize that the chain of events may have started with the reckless plotting of the CIA against Castro, perhaps in pursuit of what it thought to be Kennedy’s aim. An arrow launched into the air to kill a foreign leader may well have fallen back to kill our own."
As you can see, Schorr is a hero to me, and I'm amazed at the variety of ways his courage took shape. When he wrote that piece for the NYRB, it was just about a year after being effectively fired by his long-time employer, CBS News, who wouldn't support him in an effort to protect the name of a source who had leaked a suppressed Congressional report about CIA overreach.
The more things are the same… CBS wouldn't stick up for Schorr then, but look at what they stand up for today: television personality like Lara Logan, who interprets her job as "Chief Foreign Correspondent" as being like a press officer to make members of the military-industrial complex look heroic and cool, cheerfully do their dirty work of slandering opponents, and have pictures of herself looking cute taken in tanks and helicopters. That's what corporate journalism is worth. And that's why so little makes sense any more.
The more things are the same… CBS wouldn't stick up for Schorr then, but look at what they stand up for today: television personality like Lara Logan, who interprets her job as "Chief Foreign Correspondent" as being like a press officer to make members of the military-industrial complex look heroic and cool, cheerfully do their dirty work of slandering opponents, and have pictures of herself looking cute taken in tanks and helicopters. That's what corporate journalism is worth. And that's why so little makes sense any more.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Anyone who ever had a heart...
It's been nearly two weeks since Lou Reed died, and after reading as many tributes as I could find, and listening to most of his albums since, I'm pretty confident that most listeners got him all wrong.*
I've never been a big proponent of the New Criticism school of literary criticism, the idea that all you need to understand a work of art can be found right in the text itself. I was an English and History major all those years ago, after all. But as a mindset it is a pretty effective tool when sorting through popular culture — and it really lights up Lou Reed's work, which is too often befogged by his reputation and easy assumptions.
Lou Reed's work meant a lot to me, and since he died I've been struck by the strange number of ways his words and music are woven into my life. The first song I listened to after my daughter was born was by Lou Reed (it's how she got her middle name, in fact). Certain songs can summon thoughts and feelings with magical thoroughness: each time I hear "Sunday Morning" I'm back on certain New York streets at certain late hours remembering certain things — an insane feedback loop of nostalgia, sorrow, and regret that is so intense I don't want to talk about it. Some memories I can't even make sense of. Like that one afternoon shortly after I'd moved to Williamstown and was overwhelmed with how remote and lonely it felt, and the song "Dirty Boulevard" came on WEQX. Something about hearing it at that moment made me so happy I nearly cried.
This is all means quite a lot to me, but what I want to talk about is how he lives in our culture. The conventional line, which you've heard over and over again since his death, is that he was a consummate outsider, a poet of rough, beautiful, alternative lifestyles in the big, bad city. A chronicler of those things in the night that are frightening yet strangely attractive.
Well, a little, maybe, but no.
Let's go to the text. Consider the song "Perfect Day." The prejudiced reading is that it must have something to do with how groovy it is to get stoned in the park. But there is nothing in the song that suggests anything of the sort. You have to — and too few people can for some reason — take it at face value: that it is about how nice it is to spend the day with someone you love. Anything more and you are missing the signal by broadcasting your own noise.
The shocking truth is that Reed was an almost perfectly irony-free romantic, which is so weird and counter to his counter-cultural reputation — not to mention the generally accepted understanding of his prickly personality — that he becomes revolutionary.
The songs are crystalline images of very powerful emotions, and they work best when you trust him and meet him on his own terms. A real favorite song of mine is "Coney Island Baby," which captures the weird longing to be accepted and terror of boredom that is as perfect a summary of teenage longing as you'll find. But to really get it, you have to understand what it means to want to play football for the coach, and not think it means something kinky or sarcastic. You have to believe in the "glory of love" with all the seriousness and logic half-formed youth can muster. And, of course, you have to let "I swear I'd give it all up for you" be the last word. Doesn't matter what "it" might be. You probably felt that way once. I hope you did.
Throughout his work he was exploring what we have in common. Think about Transformer, an album that can't shake its reputation as a roman a clef about drag queens, junkies, and whores. But none of that really matters if you don't know, or even better, can get past, the novelty of it. If it weren't such a plain amazing song, it would astonishing that "Walk on the Wild Side" is the song everyone knows from his solo period (and I'm still figuring out how my state senator tweeted his memory of driving down Route 7 blasting the song with his dad in the car… his dad being our long-time district attorney). This is very human and universal, like the best art is, about alienation and loneliness and redemption. About fun and the desperate lengths we go to make our lives less dull and sad. It's a fortunate, collateral effect that it happens to maybe make you realize how much you have in common with people you might too quickly dismiss as marginal.
And I really think that Lou chose his subjects out of an abundance of compassion. Even his legendary prickliness is a function of his intense sincerity and earnestness. He couldn't be bothered with the deep artifice we demand of public figures. He obviously had many deep personal relationships, so he wasn't a total misanthrope.
When you look at the work all together, you see what values are at work. Tolerance, community, curiosity, cynicism about nothing but cynicism itself. His art is about the incredibly ancient and durable and maybe trite idea that life is really worth all the trouble if you are honest with yourself and look at it right.
* Not really true. As with so many things his wife Laurie Anderson gets it: "Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us."
I've never been a big proponent of the New Criticism school of literary criticism, the idea that all you need to understand a work of art can be found right in the text itself. I was an English and History major all those years ago, after all. But as a mindset it is a pretty effective tool when sorting through popular culture — and it really lights up Lou Reed's work, which is too often befogged by his reputation and easy assumptions.
Lou Reed's work meant a lot to me, and since he died I've been struck by the strange number of ways his words and music are woven into my life. The first song I listened to after my daughter was born was by Lou Reed (it's how she got her middle name, in fact). Certain songs can summon thoughts and feelings with magical thoroughness: each time I hear "Sunday Morning" I'm back on certain New York streets at certain late hours remembering certain things — an insane feedback loop of nostalgia, sorrow, and regret that is so intense I don't want to talk about it. Some memories I can't even make sense of. Like that one afternoon shortly after I'd moved to Williamstown and was overwhelmed with how remote and lonely it felt, and the song "Dirty Boulevard" came on WEQX. Something about hearing it at that moment made me so happy I nearly cried.
This is all means quite a lot to me, but what I want to talk about is how he lives in our culture. The conventional line, which you've heard over and over again since his death, is that he was a consummate outsider, a poet of rough, beautiful, alternative lifestyles in the big, bad city. A chronicler of those things in the night that are frightening yet strangely attractive.
Well, a little, maybe, but no.
Let's go to the text. Consider the song "Perfect Day." The prejudiced reading is that it must have something to do with how groovy it is to get stoned in the park. But there is nothing in the song that suggests anything of the sort. You have to — and too few people can for some reason — take it at face value: that it is about how nice it is to spend the day with someone you love. Anything more and you are missing the signal by broadcasting your own noise.
The shocking truth is that Reed was an almost perfectly irony-free romantic, which is so weird and counter to his counter-cultural reputation — not to mention the generally accepted understanding of his prickly personality — that he becomes revolutionary.
The songs are crystalline images of very powerful emotions, and they work best when you trust him and meet him on his own terms. A real favorite song of mine is "Coney Island Baby," which captures the weird longing to be accepted and terror of boredom that is as perfect a summary of teenage longing as you'll find. But to really get it, you have to understand what it means to want to play football for the coach, and not think it means something kinky or sarcastic. You have to believe in the "glory of love" with all the seriousness and logic half-formed youth can muster. And, of course, you have to let "I swear I'd give it all up for you" be the last word. Doesn't matter what "it" might be. You probably felt that way once. I hope you did.
Throughout his work he was exploring what we have in common. Think about Transformer, an album that can't shake its reputation as a roman a clef about drag queens, junkies, and whores. But none of that really matters if you don't know, or even better, can get past, the novelty of it. If it weren't such a plain amazing song, it would astonishing that "Walk on the Wild Side" is the song everyone knows from his solo period (and I'm still figuring out how my state senator tweeted his memory of driving down Route 7 blasting the song with his dad in the car… his dad being our long-time district attorney). This is very human and universal, like the best art is, about alienation and loneliness and redemption. About fun and the desperate lengths we go to make our lives less dull and sad. It's a fortunate, collateral effect that it happens to maybe make you realize how much you have in common with people you might too quickly dismiss as marginal.
And I really think that Lou chose his subjects out of an abundance of compassion. Even his legendary prickliness is a function of his intense sincerity and earnestness. He couldn't be bothered with the deep artifice we demand of public figures. He obviously had many deep personal relationships, so he wasn't a total misanthrope.
When you look at the work all together, you see what values are at work. Tolerance, community, curiosity, cynicism about nothing but cynicism itself. His art is about the incredibly ancient and durable and maybe trite idea that life is really worth all the trouble if you are honest with yourself and look at it right.
* Not really true. As with so many things his wife Laurie Anderson gets it: "Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us."
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