Hell yeah.

Brother West, tellin' it like it is.

Brother West on Democratic Socialism and the legacy of Dr. King

Cornel West, honorary chairperson of the Democratic Socialists of America, spoke earlier this week with Tavis Smiley of Public Radio International about socialism and capitalism, as they apply (or don't) to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama.

Listen to the interview here.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Trust me. I have dropped a name or two in my day.

Like many academics, I suffer from an almost indescribable inferiority complex. If the world's economies aren't enough to make you feel irrelevant in your life's work, your students are always there to seal the deal. The fear that no one, but no one, will care that I am breathing has, on occasion, driven me to some gauche behavior. And, I mean, come on. I have some really interesting friends. Lots of them are quite accomplished in their fields. Several of them are famous. A handful are really famous (and one, admittedly, is infamous).

So, on those occasions when I am weak from my fears of irrelevance, I have dropped a name or two, or stretched my own importance, thanks to the borrowed importance of my more accomplished friends and acquaintances.

I am reminding you of this, dear Reader, not because I am particularly proud of this behavior, but rather to establish my bona fides for the invective that is to follow.

Some of my friends and acquaintances are in the military, or loosely associated therewith. Thinking back to the build up to the most recent Iraq war, I recall many of those acquaintances and friends taking me to task for my hesitancy about, you know, invading. What I recall hearing, more than once, was a strange form of name dropping that, I think, is akin to what I was describing in myself above.

When I would argue against invading from the evidence I had (the evidence that was available in the media and through my researches beyond the limitations of the American media), these jolly ol' Jingoes would get a knowing look on their face and a sage twinkle in their eyes. These old Hawks, mind you, are ancillary. They are factotums. They are sideliners now, and armchair warriors at best. Yet they wanted me to know that they were in the know. And they knew something I didn't.

"Well, I can't say much now. But I've been talking to [fill in the blank], and he's close to Colin Powell, you know, and he said...."

The upshot of what "he" said, in these cases, was that there was a whole lot of intelligence that was simply too sensitive to leak to the media, but if we (us common folk) ever knew the full extent of it, we'd be demanding ol' Saddam's head on a pike and thanking Dubya and Co. for invading when they did. The implication, in other words, was that the evidence I had was irrelevant, in light of the evidence that I didn't have.

Now, of course, it turns out they actually didn't know something I didn't, after all. They wanted to feel important and in the know. They (and lots of other folks) bought into a culture that was fed off equal parts fear and self-aggrandizement. That latter factor, I think, was what gave these Hawks (some of them quite well placed and influential - hey, I told you I know important people, didn't I?) the impetus to take the little crumbs of rumor they had and talk like they had fat seed cakes of certainty.

Let them eat cake, indeed. And we did. And why not? After all, "they knew something we didn't." A-yup. And we should have known better. Take it from one old name dropper to another.

But if you don't believe me, perhaps you'll believe one of the knowiest in the know fellas in the game, Tony Blair, himself. Yesterday he pretty much admitted that the whole WMD justification was a pretense, and that he would "still have thought it right to remove" Hussein regardless of whether there were WMD's or not.

This has led a prominent international lawyer, Phillipe Sands, to remark that Blair may now be open to war crimes prosecution, given that he joined into the war, and the justificatory posturing that preceded it, "irrespective of the facts on the ground, and irrespective of the legality" of invasion in light of the lack of positive evidence.

There's a full story on this developing fiasco here.

Tony Blair, however, is not our problem. He merely is a good, close friend to our problem. He had tea with our problem just last week, in fact, and they had such a fine time, and...

Let me venture this: there is a deep inferiority complex at the heart of this nation. It has been endemic for generations, and it became epidemic in the last ten years. From Enron to the housing bubble to the credit crunch, we as a nation are running amok, from one fiction to the next, trying our best to feel relevant and important without the substance of fact or character to bolster us. The names we are dropping now, however, are names like "patriotism," "freedom," "security," "opportunity," and, yes, "hope."

These are the names of acquaintances whom these days we barely know. However, if we drop the names often enough, and broadly enough, everyone will assume we're still all old chums, won't they? And if those listening to us are convinced by our associations, then that's close enough to being real, isn't it, to fill the hole?

Sure it is, chum. That's the ticket. Take it from one old name dropper to another.

An historical Rhyme

I made this up in the shower this morning. Sing to the tune of "London Bridges Falling Down":


In a duel you lost your nose
lost your nose
lost your nose
Now it's made of brass and gold
Tycho Brahe!


Don't blame me. Blame Wikipedia.

You're simply not white enough. Get out.

Do not long for the night / to drag people away from their homes.
Beware of turning to evil / which you seem to prefer to your own discomfort - Job 36:20

Several years ago, I was on the phone with someone in the office of the United States Council on Energy Awareness, and I was lying my head off. I was trying to get on their mailing list.

The fellow on the other end of the phone was, by turns, suspicious, cagey, confrontational and interrogating. He wanted to know why I wanted to be on the list of this above-board, obviously grass-roots coalition of concerned citizens, rallying around a cause I think we can all get behind: the fact that there simply are not enough nuclear power plants in America.

So I was telling him that I was a high school physics teacher, and I wanted USCEA's excellent materials to share with my classes. None of this was true, of course. But then again, I wasn't the only one on the phone who was lying.

At the time, the USCEA was a well-funded and very sub rosa arm of the marketing departments of some key power companies, and they were enacting what can only be termed a sort of jiu-jitsu on the level of America's environmental memes. The USCEA was tasked with getting the message out, on the local and national levels, that the cleanest and brightest alternative to our energy "needs" was increased (and increasingly subsidised) nuclear power. Clean and green was the angle, natch.

I was successful in my ruse, and was the recipient for a few years of their materials, until the political climate changed in the Clinton years and the organization-formerly-known-as-USCEA changed its look and name and became something else with a different name but likely a similar agenda.

The main thing I was aware of (and this was the main reason I wanted on their list) was that the USCEA was slick. They sent media alerts. They put ads in magazines. They encouraged you to write your representatives, and they sent you the addresses of your senators and congress persons based upon your mailing zip code. They told you the words to say in your letter, and who to say it to. And by doing this, they made it look like writing your representative was your idea, and that their words were your words.

Like I said, slick.

My lie was a noble one. I got on their list and used their materials to contact my congress persons and senators about developments in the nuclear industry I was made aware of by USCEA's media alerts. Then, I detoured from the USCEA agenda, and instead of advocating for these inanities, I would urge my representatives to reject them, like any rational and sane member of the human species would. But during my time on that list, I also received a passive education in the big business of looking small - the power of grass root manipulation of public policies.

I was put in mind of all this just now, when I happened upon a full-page ad in the latest issue of Harper's. It's on page 11, if you have a copy handy and want to turn to it, or you can download a pdf of it here.

The top of the ad is a picture of a gridlocked highway, with the caption underneath reading, "One of America's Most Popular Pastimes." The ad copy underneath that begins the wind-up to the pitch by grousing about something everyone can agree to hate: traffic congestion. "For many people," the ad copy intones, "commutes to school and work and daycare can take up to three hours a day."

Now, I used to live in Atlanta, a city which, at the time, boasted the longest commutes in the nation - both in terms of average distance and average time per day. Getting across town could be Hell (forgive the pun) on wheels, and so I take this problem raised by the quotation above seriously. Commuting is no joke.

The answer in Atlanta, of course, was the same as it would be anywhere: more public transportation, live closer to where you work, buy a bike, telecommute, learn to live on less disposed income so you can downsize your car and your job, or, you know, walk once in a while. (My particular borough of Decatur enacted some of these sensible ideas as civic policy, making streets narrower and sidewalks wider, and focusing on the development of a planned town center with equal emphases on a central shopping district and the MARTA train station. Sensible. And it worked.)

This ad, however, sees the problem - and the solution- quite differently. The solution is not sensible downsizing of extravagance, but elimination from the streets of certain demographic groups. To paraphrase: white folks can't drive where they want to as fast as they want to because there are too many brown people in the way.

That's right. It turns out this ad is not about traffic congestion at all, really. It is about immigration, and the encouragement of a buggered and reactionary immigration policy that pumps hatred and fans hysteria (their tagline at the bottom of the ad is, "300 million people today. 600 million people tomorrow. Think about it.") while doggedly asserting that the real problem isn't our binge-and-sprawl approach to civic planning or our own over-bloated addiction to car culture. It's Pablo and Enrique, the men who just bussed your table and made sure your toilet seat was clean (or - why stop at day labor? - who prepared your taxes, taught your chemistry course, or anchored your local news. Money may make the "darkies" and the "brownies" more tolerable for a while, but when push comes to shove in the fast lane, they all look the same to us, don't they?)

Where I come from, this is called race-baiting, and it's of a species with the old arguments that say, "we can't let schools be integrated because those [fill in the insulting name for African-American men] can't be trusted around our women." It is an argument from fictional consequences, perpetuating comfortable bigotries and trafficking in stereotypes.

But the ad tell us, "Together we can do something about it." We. Who? Concerned White Folks, that's who. Jane Q. Citizen, soccer mom and den mother, blameless in her SUV, uniting with other lilly-white Janes across the nation to do something about it.

Sound familiar? Spend a few minutes on the websites listed (Californians for Population Stabilization, Americans Immigration Control Foundation, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform among them) and you will discover the same modus operandi that I encountered years back with the USCEA alive and well in the immigration wars. From the websites, you can download podcasts to share with your friends, print posters to put up, and - naturally - obtain media alerts and addresses for representatives to write. After all you, Jane Q. Citizen, carry a lot more weight and persuasive power than some evil lobbyist.

It is, in sum, fodder to help the bigots get organized, without drawing attention to the bigotry.

I don't know when Americans became such a cowardly people. Afraid of terrorists after 9/11? I can understand that, of course - even if ultimately we figure out that we trained and financed a lot of those terrorists back in the day with our wonderful covert military-industrial foresight. Afraid of our daughters and sons dying in an interminable war? Again, I find that a reasonable danger to be afraid of.

But afraid of traffic jams?

And worse - we seem not afraid enough to actually change our way-too-comfortable lives of excess and sprawl as we grasp madly for a solution, but rather afraid just enough to pass the blame off on those "others" (pick your ethnicity) who are somehow ruining "our" dolce vita.

This is pernicious rot, and it speaks ill of us (I'm talking to you, white folks). This ad campaign is a shill, and the "concerned citizens' organizations" behind them are a hissing and an abomination; well-oiled propaganda machines designed to get the Ruling and the Comfortable terrified of potential (not even actual) discomfort, and then equip them with choice pieces of the wrong data to parrot.

Like the old Who song says, It's a put on. Don't forget you're hiding.

My recommendation? If you're really worried about gridlock, sell your car. Change your life and your lifestyle. Stop blaming some fnorded "other" for problems we bring on ourselves and perpetuate.

Or... if you really want to get some karmic traction, join the mailing lists of these bozos and use their lobbying infrastructure against them - by advocating something sensible, decent and moral to our representatives - for a change.

Death of a Sneer

As of this writing, it is just under 24 hours since I have heard of the passing of one of the 'elder statesmen' of neo-conservatism, William F. Buckley. I am not sad.

Though, I will admit, unlike the death of Reagan (an event I marked with gleeful toasting, and curses on his memory for all those sleepless nights in the '80's I spent, worried that the sonafabitch was going to Drop the Bomb, and not in a Gap Band way. Oh, and for many other reasons) I am not joyful at Buckley's passing. Just notably not sad.

Strange as it may sound, when I was a child, watching Firing Line was a bonding point between my mom and me. My mother esteemed Buckley - his erudition, his star power, his von Misean lust for free-market lebensraum. Me, I didn't know any better. Blame it on my youth.

In the years since the days of those halcyon Libertarian wet-dreams, however, I have learned many things about Buckley. His friendship and early championing of Reagan is not a selling point for me. The fact that he claimed Catholicism, yet sneered at everything that the Book of Acts and the Sermon on the Mount would imply about how humans should order their economic lives, reviles me. And, like the cherry on the white, oh-so-white whipped cream, there is this:

The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.

National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.

—William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957

I'm sorry, but that is (if you will excuse the expression) beyond the pale.

Now I realize that many will say that Buckley repudiated his racism later in life. Frankly, I don't care. Someone with his intelligence, and particularly his religious background, should never have been a racist at all. It is inexcusable, even if he simply held these opinions in private. The fact that he used his magazine as a national bully-pulpit to trumpet these opinions is, I am afraid, damnable.

These are harsh words for a theologian to use, I realize (though perhaps no harsher than Buckley's in 1957), and so I should couch them theologically. Within Catholic understandings (a worldview in which, apparently, Buckley saw himself), such actions are damnable if they are not confessed. And perhaps he did, at some point, confess them to his priest.

But if absolution is going to forestall condemnation, it requires genuine repentance. Repentance, moreover, requires a making of amends to those wronged. I cannot speak for William F. Buckley, so I do not know if he undertook these weightier matters of the soul in private. It does not appear so, from his public actions.

But we can still hope, at some level, that his heart was changed; that he truly repented of the very un-charitable, un-loving positions he espoused. We can hope.

But in my hoping, I am still not sad. God help him, yes. God help us all, in the wake of his legacy.

Nashville Art: Past, Present and Future

The following is an article which I wrote which appears in the December 2006 issue of Nashville Arts Magazine.

It happened 25 years ago in Chattanooga. Ten years ago it swept Atlanta. As I look around Nashville, I want to ask, “Is it happening here?”

In other words, is the Nashville art scene on the brink of a convergence of grassroots and civic forces that might make the arts—all the arts, and not merely the musical ones—a permanent and prominent factor in city life?

“There’s a real optimism in Nashville right now,” says Herb Williams, who has become known in the Nashville art world both for his colorful crayon art and his very visible studio space above the Arts Company downtown. “There’s a real sense that this can work and it can happen. For the first time we have beautiful galleries and amazing art all in one block [along Fifth Avenue]. That’s never happened here before.”

In the mid-1990’s Atlanta was the center of a similar groundswell, a mixture of known ateliers and a sudden explosion of small art galleries and studios. Many of these were the result of determined efforts by cooperative groups of local semi-professional and amateur artists. Some of these groups (like the now-legendary Mattress Factory projects, the Light Monkeys, the Ballroom Studios, the BlueMilk group, and the West Hill Concept Union—a group of which I was a member) flourished for a few years, then struggled, then folded. By the turn of the new century a very few—the Eyedrum gallery and performance space and the YoungBlood gallery, in particular—had found a way to ‘make it work,’ and are still in operation today.

“I think a tremendous impetus for the energy these galleries had was the 1996 Olympics,” says Robert Cheatham, now Eyedrum’s executive director. “A much wider range of demographics came into Atlanta, with a concomitant lowering of the average age. I think the reason the ball kept rolling is because of the huge swell of population into the city and all the development in housing that came in the wake of the Games. That was a double edged sword, for sure, but it helped ensure there were a lot of young people, and they were the ones interested in what we were doing. They were the crowd that came to everyone’s openings, and not just ours.”

What the Olympics brought to Atlanta as well was the brief taste of what it was like to be a '24 hour' city. Cultural events occurred at all hours of the day and night, and they were affordable, and many absolutely free. Artists, musicians, and performers from across the nation and the world were suddenly everywhere in the city, and the atmosphere drew local artists out from their individual efforts and got them thinking about cooperative possibilities.

Tom Wegrzynowski, who is now finishing his MFA in painting at the University of Alabama, joined the West Hill Concept Union in 1998, after it had been in operation for two years. He considers this to be a defining moment in his development as an artist. “While I had my own studio practice, I was largely isolated from other artists at the time,” he says. “I consider joining the Concept Union to be the beginning of my professional art career. In that way I would say that involvement with an art collective was very influential in the development of my work.”

During these years it was not unheard of that Nashville-based artists would leave for Atlanta and not return, seeing vitality there that did not seem to exist here in the eighties and nineties. Allen Welty-Green was the director & composer of the Mind's Eye performance group - a multi-media company that produced many events in Nashville and across the southeast between 1986 and 1992. “We held the first event produced at the Darkhorse Theater. It was still an open church sanctuary at the time. We hung the lights and gave the walls their first coat of black paint. When Mind's Eye dissolved, I was unable to find the resources in Nashville to continue producing art in the same capacity, so I moved to Atlanta, where I already had a number of connections.” Now a member of the Eyedrum board of directors, Welty-Green has continued to produce dance and performance pieces since his move.

But Atlanta’s underground art scene has a very different face now than it had in those early days just after the Olympics. The energy and spark has faded in many ways, and this fact is noted and lamented by those who have been watching for the last three decades. One such observer is Jerry Cullum, a senior editor at ArtPapers magazine, based in Atlanta. “What I see now is that scene is splintering between a few remaining groups. There is some crossover and communication from Eyedrum to the YoungBlood gallery, and some crossover in a minor way from YoungBlood to a new gallery named Beep Beep. But I wish there were more.”

In many ways Atlanta is an example of what results when a groundswell of artistic energy explodes without a concerted civic effort to nurture and sustain it. “At YoungBlood we’ve been lucky to have a lot of support from local businesses, and we went to local colleges and found folks willing to work for us as interns,” says Kelley Teasley, who co-founded the gallery with Maggie White in 1997, “But it takes a lot of patience and we both have had to have other jobs to get by.” What seems to have hurt the Atlanta art scene the most in the years since the Millennium is that the efforts have remained too grassroots, without widespread and concerted support on the part of the city government.

Contrasts to this ‘hands off’ civic approach exist within a few hours’ drive in either direction from Nashville. Both Chattanooga and Paducah are high-profile examples of what can be accomplished when a city chooses to support and foster the arts on a community-wide scale. Twenty-five years ago it was exactly this sort of vision for the revitalization of Chattanooga’s downtown area that helped support the now very-successful Bluff View arts district, which boasts museums, studios and galleries just a few minutes’ walk from the Tennessee Aquarium and the city’s urban center. More recently, Paducah, KY enacted a massive “Artist Relocation Program,” which offered significant economic and business incentives, including interest-free housing loans, to artists willing to move to the city and foster its cultural life. The city also recently invested in a multi-million dollar performing arts center designed to attract musicians and performers of national caliber. “This program is a perfect fit for the community and its goals for the future,” said Artist Relocation Program coordinator Mark Barone in a 2001 interview. Since he spoke those words, many of those goals have been realized. The Lowertown area of the city now boasts well-established galleries and arts activities, and Paducah is now beginning to bank on its reputation as a cultural center in tourism revenues.

“Cities like Paducah and Chattanooga are really embracing artists as an economic development booster,” says Caroline Carlisle of the Twist Gallery, one of the galleries making up the now-growing collection of storefront studio-gallery spaces in the Arcades on Fifth Avenue. “I would love to see the powers that be realize these new visual art opportunities. I would love to see Nashvillians value the visual arts in their city, really embrace it and support it. People have to realize that if they want urban experiences like the Avenue of the Arts and Art at the Arcade provides, they have to support it with their pocketbooks as well as with their presence.”

All the artists I interviewed, from Nashville and across the southeast, stressed the importance of group efforts and working collectively to achieve common goals. Robert Cheatham encourages artists here to be self-starters, to get projects underway without waiting for anyone to give permission or even money. Herb Williams emphatically agrees, “I remember early days at Downtown Presbyterian Church, getting a chance to work with other artists there. We put in sweat equity and were part of the community together. My art responded to the elements of that situation. We need more opportunities for artists like that.”

But those opportunities may disappear if there is not an equal commitment at the level of city government to create the economic and civic support to help give the arts living, breathing viability here. There are definitely efforts on the horizon, for example the Nashville Civic Design Center, which is a nonprofit organization founded in 2000 which seeks to foster public dialogue about the direction of Nashville’s civic space. Public art and the support of artists have played a part in these discussions. But there is also a history of resistance among city government officials to consideration of the kind of widespread commitment that would move us in the direction of artist-friendly cities like Paducah and Chattanooga.

So what will happen in Nashville? Since I moved here in 2002, I definitely have sensed a similar energy growing all over the city—in East Nashville, and now downtown at the level of the local galleries—to that energy I felt when I lived in Atlanta. But I also am worried that some of the same civic difficulties that kept Atlanta from becoming a truly arts-and-artist-friendly city may be in effect here. The pieces are in place, and the choices that are made in the very near future will determine the cultural community and reputation Nashville will have for years to come. As artists and patrons, we are truly here at a portentous time.

“We’ve got the momentum, the people, and the galleries all around town moving forward like never before,” Herb Williams says, summing it all up for me. “It’s now or never.”

Categories: culture

Zyklon-Barbie

Here's what worries me about America.

See, it's like this. Say that you're an ugly, mule-toothed skinhead race-baiting neo-Nazi. You are also a musician, and your career has been built on writing and playing songs that denigrate all the "mud peoples" and praises Aryan sensibilities and family values. Then, let's say, for example, you die in a tragic automobile accident. Very few people are going to notice, or care. Some might even cheer. After all, you were ugly. In our country, bad racists are ugly (natch).

But what, oh what, America, if your racists are beautiful?

The ugly racist of my example is, of course, Ian Donaldson of the white power band Skrewdriver. Outside of fringe circles of the right wing, Donaldson never garnered much notice. The songs Skrewdriver sang were not examples of high art - far from it. Humorless paens to the likes of Rudolph Hoess and testosterone pumped swastika waving were mostly the order of the day. Easy to dismiss these guys as kooks (because, um, they are kooks).

But what about Prussian Blue, my friends. What about Prussian Blue?

Prussian Blue, you see, are a folk duo made up of the teenage Gaede twins, Lynx and Lamb. They have delicate features, straight blonde hair, and winsome looks to give the camera. In its original incarnation, Lynx played violin and Lamb played guitar, though now they have graduated to a more robust, band sound. They look sweet - innocent, even.

Oh, and they sing Skrewdriver songs. Did I mention that they sing Skrewdriver songs?

The Gaede twins, y'see - in fact, the entire Gaede family - are virulent racists. Consider, for example, this selection of lyrics, penned by Lynx, for the song "What Must Be Done":

ALL the mud races must be banished,
For look at the world they have damaged.
Look around and what do I see?
Ugly brown faces staring at me.

Our people must look like my mom and dad.
They don't now and that makes me mad.
We don't want to be mongrelized,
We want to be Nature's Finest down deep inside.

Now here's what worries me. In America we seem quite eager to accept any lame or even hateful idea that comes down the flagpole, so long as the one handing it to us is attractive. We idolize the uncouth and the ill-mannered so long as they have a Hollywood address or a Prada pedigree. We obsess about JonBenet to the neglect of our own children and crave our own fifteen minute alotment of attention.

In such a milieu, it is not hard for me to see the possibility that Lynx and Lamb would get a sympathetic ear for their tripe. "After all," I can hear the voices saying, " they're so cute, their politics can't be all that bad..." At the very least, their "angelic good looks" are garnering the twins a rather high media profile - even when the media attention is less than charitable.

The media outlets in this country are notoriously fickle. In a constant craving for a new angle, I fear it is only a matter of time before some major news organization decides to give Prussian Blue a "fair hearing," in the name of some distorted notion of "equal time" or "free speech." If that comes to pass, we may find ourselves coming face to face with what America really values, as liberty and justice for all crumbles against the brute force of our national narcissism.

I mean, after all, they're only kids. And they're so cute...

Almost Famous

I've been reminiscing lately about one of the stranger periods of my life - the year in Atlanta when I was a professional in-home caregiver.

I hadn't intended to come into that line of work, mind you. My first job out of college was being a shipping-recieving clerk on a loading dock for a big chain store in Lenox mall (I graduated with a degree in philosophy, only to find that no one was hiring philosophers in Atlanta. So: loading dock). I worked that job very well for about a year (I think I was the only clerk in Lenox whose manager gave a raise to in the hopes of keeping - I was not making enough to live on with the student loans and I was starting to look for other options) and I had read an ad looking for child care workers, and so I applied.

Those of you who know me will be raising their eyebrows at this point, knowing my long-standing antipathies. But see the logic: I really wanted to teach, ultimately, but had no idea how to go about that and no credentials to do that. So this seemed like a 'back door' to me - a temporary solution to get me moving in the direction I wanted to go. Paying my dues, if you will - what my Ma used to term 'cleaning the turkey.'

The service I interviewed with was on the north side of town, and was run from the lower level (I hesitate to call such well-furnished rooms a 'basement') of a house off Roswell road. The process took a couple of hours, and at the end, the consultant I was working with told me that there were, in fact, no child care positions available for me. But they did have this one, slightly strange, case. Would I be willing to hear about that one?

I was willing. The loading dock had made me very willing.

It turns out that I was being asked to consider becoming a caregiver for Steve, a 35 year old man who had been involved in a terrible accident. He was born with blood that coagulated too readily (think of the opposite of haemophaelia) and had been hurt in his early thirties in a basketball accident. He went up for a layup, was knocked down, and hit his head. He didn't know that he was concussed, and that a clot was forming in his medulla (the brain stem that controls motor functions) which would lead to a massive stroke. That afternoon he laid down for a nap, and didn't wake up for six weeks.

When he finally awoke, he had lost all his fine motor control, most of his speech, his ability to walk, he had become acutely walleyed, and his emotional pallette had been decimated. He still had gross motor function, but that meant that he was, for eaxmple, as likely - more likely, in fact - to knock over or break something as pick it up. Moreover, when he spoke to you it was vaguely like talking to a Picasso painting, with regard to his eyes. I don't intend this description in a mean way - I just want to convey that his physiognomy was one that many found a bit unsettling.

So when I entered the picture, Steve had been in this state for about five years. He worked hard to keep his body in good shape, and to fight every day to regain little pieces of his abilites. I would aid him in his daily exercise regimen at the YMCA, and (with the aid of a thick leather belt around his middle and a walker) help him work on slow, laborious walks - mainly to and from his van at the beginning and the end of each of our days together.

Now, among the differently abled, as one might imagine, there is a sort of hierarchy. And this hierarchy is often based upon financial resources. Part of what made my work with Steve possible was that he had vast economic resources (from both his family and from a medical settlement surrounding his accident). This allowed him to have a very functional, semi-independent life - one that would not be available to everyone in his physical condition.

It also allowed him to get into all sorts of mischief, and that's really what I want to muse about here.

Because of the uniqueness of each traumatic brain injury (TBI) on individual patients, every injury of this sort presents its own set of interesting complications. Steve was extremely limited physically, but he still thought like an athletic and attractive 35-year-old. Which means, mostly, that he tried constantly to flirt and chat up women. The difficulty was that many women were not patient with his speech, and even those who were found his uncanny appearance unsettling.
What this led to was a cycle of despair. TBI victims often have limitations on their brain's stamina to process emotion and they often evince what is referred to as "blunted affect" - which means they sort of 'cut corners' on emotions at times, seeming insensitive or short to folks who don't understand the mechanics of the injury. Combine this with the constant frustration of desire, frustration resulting from physical limitation, and you can imagine the depths of sadness and rage that might result. Steve and I talked about this a lot, when he felt like talking to me.

But Steve was not fully limited, simply because of his financial resources. And it was interesting to watch the effects of wealth mixed with blunted affect.

In the time I knew him, Steve went tandem skydiving, took a trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon on a mule (with a specially crafted saddle to support him), and was flown in loop de loops in a glider plane. For each of these adventures, part of my job (in addition to the regular tasks of care) was to videotape the proceedings, and later edit the footage together to a punchy soundtrack.

With each adventure complete and documented, we sent these tapes to David Letterman.

"I've got to get famous, David," Steve would tell me repeatedly. "If I can get on David Letterman everything will be fine. I know just what I'll say to him..." and he would proceed to tell me, in halting growls and slurs, how the conversation would proceed.

I edited the tapes and dutifully sent them, and I found myself wondering what, if anything, the staff at the Letterman show thought of this strange phenomenon - if, indeed, they thought of it at all. I wonder if the tapes even ever got to them, or just were lost to the mailroom and mid-level factotums.

The effects of economic difference on the perception and ability to live differently is, of course, nothing new. In older days the difference between being labelled 'eccentric' and being confined to a sanitarium was often contingent upon one's breeding, one's family resources. But in the years since working with Steve I have often wondered, as the likes of "American Idol" and its cousins have flooded the airwaves, the extent to which the same motivations which drove Steve are driving the hearts of these celebrity-wannabes.

By which I guess I mean, to what extent, and why, do we all seem to think that the answer to everything is to get famous, to get on televisions, to talk to Letterman?

And I don't just point that finger at my culture, at those around me. When I send out CD's to magazines to be reviewed, or get my mug up on stage for my fifteen minutes, there's that same desire. Watch me, love me. Make me more complete, meaningful, neccessary than I currently am. Validate me, because I feel disposable and broken.

In the end, I probably have spent an equivalent amount of money and time on musical equipment as Steve did on adventures and videotape. And who knows how much the "American Idol" crowd spends on image, haircuts, publicity? The mind boggles.

Being as I don't own a TV, I don't have much occasion to check in on the Letterman show, but the few times a year I do see it, I am always a bit curious. I wonder if I'll ever see Steve on it. I wonder, if I do, if being-there will have done the trick he wanted it to. I wonder if everything would be fine, then. I wonder.

Carry no pictures.

This has been the week for art films. Went again last night to the Belcourt theater, near my apartment, and watched the epic (and recently unearthed) masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville, Army of Shadows (L'armee des Ombres).

Travis and I have discussed Melville before, as both of us are big fans of his incomprehensibly beautiful Le Samourai. There are similarities and differences between the two films. Both are suffused with the tres cool aesthetic and detachment of the French New Wave (though Melville precedes the movement in many key ways), and both refuse the easy narrative linearity of your more run-of-the-mill action-adventure films. But, where Samourai feels at points almost whimsical (or as whimsical as you can get about an ill-fated and star-crossed assassin), there is no whimsy to be had anywhere in Shadows. Do not carry pictures of your daughter. They will be used against you. Carrying cyanide capsules, though, is continually reinforced as a pretty good idea.

The film is about the French Resistance, but it is so unlike your normal Hollywood war film that you might spend much of it unaware of the larger backdrop of World War II. You could, in fact, replace or transpose the story into any conflict with oppression - ancient or contemporary. The film's narrative hangs as tightly together as a Harold Pinter play, and trades on the same sort of ambiguities - both internal and external.

If you see the film (and I think it is well worth going out of your way to see), I recommend you do your best to get carried away with it. I spent the first reel trying to hang the narrative against historical and physical landmarks and it simply got in the way of exploring and enjoying (to the extent one can "enjoy" a film like this) the nuance and breadth of the story. I think it works better for the viewer to simply give in to the ambiguities that the characters o the screen are experiencing. Like us, they do not always know where they are, or why they are there, or what to do next. But the decisions that are made - both by the characters and in the narrative itself - are bold and daring (even if ultimately ill-fated and star-crossed).

While I think, in the end, I prefer Le Samourai, the films complement each other and confirm (as if this needed conformation) Melville's mastery of cinema in all its dark genres.

It's Time to Zag

So while I was at Massanetta I became reacquainted with an old, old love of mine - one that had become buried in the mists of time and almost... almost... forgotten. But not completely. Not entirely. Not entirely forgotten.

I guess you could say I got in touch with my inner Cheerwine.

Cheerwine, y'see, is a bottled beverage which hails from the Carolinas, and is largely unavailable anywhere else. It is akin in taste to a really cherry Dr. Pepper, but it has a bit more bite and a lot of that old timey cachet that just gets you right here (he points to his heart with his hand). It makes you think of another time and place, a place where you can sit on a porch and play checkers on a checkerboard with old bottlecaps for the pieces. The kind of nostalgia which Cracker Barrel tries (and fails) to export wholesale. Cheerwine has that. It has it in spades.

But here's the thing, see. The thing is this. I'm a purist.

If you have read this blog at all, you know I am rather picky about my beverages. And since I am not a cola drinker generally, the fact that there is one soda that I am fanatical about is sort of an exception-proving-the-rule type thing. But even here, I am quite picky.

Not just any Cheerwine. Not in cans. No. Not in two-liter jugs. No. Gotta be this: gotta be Cheerwine in glass bottles. Ice cold. Preferably painful-cold, like out of a long-cooled ice chest.

And here's the best part. You wanna know the best part? The best part is this. Cheerwine, when it comes in the glass bottles, has a different formula than regular Cheerwine. Like all the "soft" drinks, the Cheerwine company sometime back started using corn sweeteners in most of its products. But not the Cheerwine in the glass bottles. No. Proudly and happily they have maintained their heritage - the heritage when these kind of fizzy drinks meant something. When they took a stand. This is Americana at its grand height. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to introduce to you a carbonated beverage still made with real sugar (there's the proof, there on the right).

So, when it comes to "soft" drinks, rest assured I am remaining vigilant, though now there is a happy chink in my armor. I think, every once in a blue moon, I can contentedly kick back and relax with a cold bottle of Cheerwine ("On All Occasions, It's Good Taste") - even here in Nashville.

I brought some home with me from the 'netta. Oh, and I found an online source, as well.

Dude. Forget your tired old corn-syrup cola. It's freakin' time to zag!