Monthly Archives: September 2017

Evan Connell (YGtCTO Words #69)

You Have Got to Check This Out

The White Lantern


Book written by Evan S. Connell

I haven’t decided yet how much I want the author to intrude into the text when writing non-fiction. That probably means that I never will decide. For that matter, I’m not too excited when the author overtly comments on the action in a work of fiction.

But I am being disingenuous. On the traditional proscenium stage, the actors are surrounded on three sides with the audience composing the fourth. If any of the cast come out of character and address the audience, it is called “breaking the fourth wall.” Think of Romeo and Juliet– the idea goes way back. Dobie Gillis and Moonlighting and many more television shows have utilized this conceit. We take it for granted in documentaries without thinking too hard about the fact that the onscreen host is not actually talking to us as part of his true experience. There is an aspect of pretending for him and for us.

So, truth be told, I probably care less about the intrusion of the artist in the work that I thought. The problem only arises when I notice and feel jarred out of the consumption of the art.

Then, there is non-fiction, running the gamut from memoir through scientific journal writing. We expect a certain amount of verisimilitude when that book wrapper bears a non-fiction imprint. While we might forgive the intrusion of an individual point of view, we are less likely to forgive opinion defrocking the facts.

When I started haunting the science and history sections of the library, I tended to read anything that caught my eye. Connell was a successful author and his publisher did a good job packaging his non-fiction. I noticed them and became absorbed by the wide range of subjects covered.

Evan Connell

In The White Lantern and The Aztec Treasure House,
Connell wrote about the details and characters that floated around the edges of other history books. This was before easy access to weird history and the lunatic fringe. Connell’s thesis was the stutter and stumble that marked human progress, but he illustrated it with the sorts of stories that felt like you had curled up with Fox Mulder. Everything was not weird (and most was pretty much human nature), but the presentation would have fit right in with a flashlight and a big sheet.

That’s always been the big picture commentary of the best art about the weird: presentation and point of view are everything. Ultimately, that is true of all human endeavor- it is the difference between a colonist and an invader.

Connell intrudes in his essays with personal commentary about how certain incidents are playing out again at the time of his writing. Re-reading him, that time of writing has also become history. The cycles that he highlights have had the opportunity to return yet again. The comments of the moment are once again spoken to an audience that the artist never really envisioned.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 94 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Dr. John (YGtCTO Music #69)

You Have Got to Check This Out

Right Place, Wrong Time


Song written by Mac Rebennack and performed by Dr. John
(and yes, I know)

Apparently, my earliest memories of hearing this song must come from other people controlling the radio. Album-oriented rock dominated the taste of those with mastery over the radio dial, just as they were beholden to the disc jockeys and program directors at their preferred radio stations.

Just as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and other singers defined the American songbook, AOR programmers picked the songs that would define popular rock music going forward. They always mixed in Motown that they deemed appropriate, but that mostly enshrined the idea of Motown as its own wonderful thing. No, these rock gatekeepers made sure that we heard certain songs often enough that they became inseparable from the eternal cycle of summer and school.

Dr. John

They played the hits of the day, but there were always these songs that stayed and played for more than a decade. Of course, the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, and the Who all factored heavily in the mix, just like Buffalo Springfield, the Hollies, and Jimi Hendrix. Boston and the Eagles and Queen all pushed their way in as well.

So,
what was Dr. John doing there? He was definitely weirder than Joe Walsh and more unexpected than Warren Zevon.

Being as close-minded as the average conservative radio talk show host (like most stressed-out youth), I drew my line at Dr. John. I liked the stuff on this side and Dr. John would sit on the other. Really, if the song hadn’t been played incessantly, maybe I would have come around sooner. My theory is that radio DJ’s loved the idea of having a song title available that could be squeezed into about a million one liners, all of them dumb.

Skip ahead a few years and I started chilling to Fats Domino and Little Richard. That led to the Nevilles and their various incarnations. Professor Longhair emerged and I was all over that.

And… we are back at Dr. John.

You can’t expect a child to have the knowledge of a man. Respect comes with knowledge because that provides context. Jugglers complain that audiences never applaud the truly difficult feats because they don’t know enough to appreciate them. I was perfectly happy to cast aside a segment of music.

Being in the audience is difficult. Artists want you there, but they also want to do their own thing and be appreciated for what they are creating. Inevitably, they assume some knowledge or context on the spectator’s part. When that doesn’t materialize, the entire artifice collapses.

Something strange has happened over the centuries as art has moved out of the palace through the salon and into the common parlance. The expanded audience has created expectations that cannot be met by an audience unseen and unknown.

It seems almost easy to say that you can’t have American music without New Orleans and my path of discovery was reasonable. But, really, how many other doors have closed in the same time?

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 95 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

On Voting 15: Concluding Thoughts

On Living Here Now
We deserve representation for our votes

Perhaps the true message of the inability of the major parties to maintain real dominance is that we require alternatives to extended power reigns. That desire to impede long, tight grips on the government by individuals (or monolithic groups like the aristocracy or the Democrats or Wall Street or…) may well have been the true motivator of the Founding Fathers. Perhaps some of them feared that more than they felt the need to distribute freedoms.

Bear in Mind

Much of what I have posted over the past two weeks suggests that voting behavior in 2016 was not too far afield from the norm, but this caveat must be raised:

  • None of this suggests election meddling did not occur or that such meddling is not heinous and criminal. The voting was close enough and the ultimate representation skewed enough that nothing about the data rules out meddling. In fact, historical precedents (such as Hayes/Tilden) should encourage a thorough review of the election. The last thing we need is a regression in validity.
Third Parties

The two primary parties have an immense investment in ensuring that no third party rises to challenge their hegemony.

  • Voter turnout in 2016 has been studied endlessly with the weird conclusion that it was up and down from prior elections. Either way, the turnout from those who could vote was somewhere between 55% and 60%. This means that the Democrats captured 28.6% and the Republicans 26.4% of eligible voters. (I used 57.5% as a good mid-point for turnout and the total voting pattern I outlined a few days ago for the 2016 federal government.)
  • The two major parties have a clear vested interest in keeping turnout low. If a third party could energize another 25% of the voter population to show up at the polls, then they would be in the driver’s seat. If that sounds impossible, we are talking about 75% turnout, which puts us within the realm of the possible compared to other nations. Keep this in mind the next time you hear about support for voter ID laws and all the rest. Neither party benefits when too many of us actually vote.
  • The most successful third parties (at getting people into federal seats) have been geographically limited. This should be a model for getting such a thing rolling. As a humble suggestion, start some local third parties with quality funding and telegenic candidates. Get elected and then start merging parties across regions. Find some common ground among Green and Libertarian and Conservative and all the rest and refuse to back candidates running with the two major parties.
  • The occasional independent candidate can break out, but they often run on a single issue (sometimes in opposition to a single issue). Often, they melt into one of the parties upon election. I would argue that an independent candidate with means and likelihood of victory ought to join a nascent third party.
Abstaining

The majority of the eligible population do not participate in most elections.

  • I understand that we have done a good job making it inconvenient and difficult to vote. We vote on week days and often work a distance from our polling station. The primary last week in New York was conveniently scheduled from noon until nine, which sounds good, except that I know people who work that entire time. We can’t vote on a Saturday? Not even try it? Of course, as I mention above, it does work to the advantage of the two major parties to keep turnout low.
  • No matter how annoying or difficult, we all still need to vote. Maybe start taking the day off until your workplace actually closes for a couple hours from lack of employees and puts up a sign that says “Be back in two hours – we are celebrating our nation by voting”.
  • Not voting is a vote for the winner. That doesn’t bother enough people. The two major parties rely on ennui to keep potential voters at home. That ought to anger people, but then… ennui.
Republicans

They last had a good run when Truman annoyed voters and Eisenhower excited them. Otherwise, most people haven’t really been inclined to vote Republican.

  • Stole a few pages from the old Democratic party and learned to game the system. All of this worked well for the Democrats until well after WW II.
    • Hit the smaller states hard
    • Gain control of state governments and manage state-wide decisions on federal voting; this would be gerrymandering and voter ID
    • Appeal to people with staunch conservative views on social issues
    • Drape yourself in the local version of patriotism
  • Essentially, the Republican party was the minority party for the past 70 years based on voter preference. Any claim to a right to govern is based on the shady math of our election process. It does feel like we have forgotten that we became an independent nation in the first place because our government representation did not reflect the reality of our population.
Democrats

Somehow, the Democrats have turned themselves into the meritorious party done wrong by the system.

  • In the past 50 years, the Democrats earned an outright majority of the popular vote for all federal offices only three times: twice under Jimmy Carter and once under Barrack Obama. That’s not much on which to base a claim to general popularity.
  • Probably can claim that they are playing the long game. That sounds good anyway. We do tend to switch back and forth between the parties for President, but that’s a shell game with a lot of visual appeal. In the long run, the Democratic party will no doubt adopt the 21st century version of its old tactics (currently employed by the Republicans) and we’ll all look back on these days and wonder what we (currently aligned with either party) were thinking.
What I Expected

Laying my cards on the table, this series was not my original intention. I had been thinking about the way politicians and political parties influence the populace. While pulling together my thoughts in that area, I casually dug around in past election results. Obviously, that distraction turned into full blown research.

Even so, I expected to find that the Democrats had been generally ill-used of late and that it was a recent phenomenon. My current view of a pendulum swinging back and forth in favor of each party is an evolution from that earlier perception that the Republican party had found a new way to play the game.

The real problem took a while to crystallize. I simply do not believe that the make-up of our elected representatives at the federal level reflects the will of the people. Moreover, I believe that has long been the case. The fault in my research is that I did not go back far enough in time. I do not know when (or of) the elected representation ever did reflect the will of the people. Perhaps some day.

Part 1 of the series is where all this begins