The ____ Drama

There was once somewhere on this blog a detailed description of my exasperation with various artists wasting their time and energy accusing each other of things they may or may not have done on the internet. And they wasted so much of their time on it. And getting others to care and waste their time on it. And then they started telling me that if I deleted my comments they would book me at their festivals. And I thought, what a silly world some have created for themselves.

So I deleted the old post because it had too many specific clues in the URL but I wanted to keep some of the words because they are worth saying. I also deleted it because the less specific inter artist drama that I or anyone else gets sucked into and clogs up the internet with, then the better.

In fact I think the points, which are good and valid and ought not be deleted, that I am trying to get across here works even better when you don't know who exactly is being referenced. You could read it and think it is about someone totally different and that might be the case because a lot of people like to start controversies with each other rather than doing other things.

Needless to say I won't be playing any festivals this winter anyway. There's no money in it, and hanging out in ghost towns taking pictures and writing books is a heck of a lot more profitable and interesting way for me to spend my time.

Here ya go...


* * *

I have known ______ for a few years. _____ has stayed at my house before a few times when I lived in DC....

It's kinda hard for me to understand the drama because I've been living out west for a few years where neither of these artists visit often and I've been pretty bogged down by my personal life as well. My only real connection to the issue is various email updates or pages like this I see from different people online. Different sides post links to different archived articles or emails and I have no idea if any of them are real or where just invented because anyone can write an html document that looks like anything.

As far as I know either BOTH sides are right... _______ perhaps said some insensitive rude comments once in an email, AND _______ has blown things out of proportion and unleashed legions of fans to attack faint internet ghosts of intolerance while very real and a lot more socially important far right nuttiness (ex: Arizona's racial profiling law, Global Warming Deniers, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Fox news in general and the vast majority of the know-nothing Tea Party) is never mentioned or opposed by their "organization" anywhere.

Or, perhaps NEITHER side is right... there never was an insensitive email or internet post, ______ never ripped of _______, and _______ has been forging documents to make _____ look like _____ is being attacked in an effort to get publicity and support... _________ and ______are right to expose and denounce _____... Yet, perhaps they too are involved in the conspiracy... maybe the wiley ol _______ himself is the one who wrote _____ comically partisan and juvenile defacement to his own wikipedia page in an effort to make ________ fans look stupid and overzealous. Could I ever prove that? No. Could I ever disprove it? No. Is that even *likely*? Probably not.

The point is that me trying to use the internet here to figure out who is right is completely pointless because the internet can never prove a document is real or not or who wrote it or when they wrote it. As much as I dig around this stuff there is no revelation, no catharsis, just mud slinging which makes me want to support BOTH artists at the same time that it turns me off to BOTH artists. Sort of like presidential elections- where both candidates have a bit of dirt on the other, they sling it, and then you end up voting for no one because you're turned off to both of them. Here though I don't know whether any of the dirt is real or who to believe.

The only solution to this controversy is for the next ____ Festival to host a sort of mock trial with each defendant representing their own case, internet experts as professional witnesses to certify the validity and timing of certain documents, and a jury of peers to hear the evidence and vote for one side of the other, awarding damages as justified. Of course that would never happen because people want to go to _____ to drink, listen to bands, and have a good time. Another reason it would never happen is because then the controversy would die. At this point BOTH artists are able to generate fans and empathy and support by keeping the controversy alive as long as possible allowing each of them to appear "besieged", without ever being able to definitively prove or disprove anything because all the "evidence" I have seen so far is hearsay and internet links to archived documents.

I think somewhere long ago there was a time when industrial bands stood for something and said what they believed in. I have already elsewhere and at length described the decline of that culture from a cutting edge, avante garde movement to a fashion-centric commercialized dance scene of overblown egos, Press-Play DJ's, Top 40 hits, no local support, and "bands" consisting of one or two people standing behind laptops, staring at backing track playlists, not moving, or pretending to play midi controllers that are not plugged into anything and basically just standing there looking bored with fixed eyes.

So perhaps it is fitting, that, rather than supporting one band or another for their courageous stand against apartheid, animal testing, mental institutions, war, bigotry, homophobia, or class inequity... today we should all be supporting one or another band against the ghosts they see in other bands, ghosts which might never be proven, and which might never even have existed in the first place.

Of course one side or the other might be right. The great bulk of circumstantial and written evidence I have seen so far is currently leading me to support _____ . But the damage is still done. Instead of attacking the outside world with intense music to *make people think* this scene- advanced in its state of terminal decline- turns in on itself to attack itself, to defend itself from the attacks of one another, attacks which in all likelihood are based on fictitious insults. "Industrial" has completely lost its relevance, its *raison d'être*, and its ability to direct its energies against the outside world. ______ drama is indeed the black hole of the internet. It is also the intellectual manifestation of the highest, final, parodic stage of this genre's development. I am eternally grateful to it for relieving me of those extra braincells I had been burdened with for so long.

Great Dissatisfaction with Geico

Dear Geico,

I am very dissatisfied with your company. I have been paying you about $140 a month for 6 months and in that time I have had no accidents or car trouble or anything. It was getting time to renew or replace my policy with you and as a seasonal worker between Colorado and Utah, I was thinking about moving to Utah permanently and changing my car registration and insurance policy to reflect that.

I went to your website and filled out the info and this is the quote you gave me. $62 per month. I entered all the information on the Website exactly as it is on file on your computers and as I later informed the lady I spoke on the phone with. I was excited by this low, competitive quote and today I called up a Geico representative to discuss it with them. They were polite and friendly to talk to, but they actually gave me a much higher quote- about $200. And then they said that if I did not accept this quote and permanently change my address with your company it could create 'problems later' if I had to file a claim.

Where then, did the $62 per month quote come from? I assume your company can pay for website programmers with enough skills to use the same algorithms to calculate payments as your employees use on their computers when I talk to them over the phone. Did it fall from the sky? Was it the product of a random number generator?

This all seems very absurd. Where I was living when I had the $140 quote was Durango, Colorado. I had a 73 mile round trip commute every day from my house, just south west of town off Highway 160, all the way to Durango Mountain Resort, in the mountains 28 miles North of Durango. I would have to drive home every night through herds of elk and deer, blizzards and snow storms, ice, and many other dangerous drivers who tend to drive drunk in that area. That is where I had the wreck that totaled my previous vehicle, as the roads were clear 2 days before Christmas when I was driving home at night, but then one patch of black ice on a 7.5% downhill grade with a curve on it and a bridge just happened to be waiting for me and I hit it. Anyone working for Geico who it it too would have also totaled their car. I was even driving under the speed limit at the time.

Today I live in Green River, Utah. We are a town of 900 people on I-70. It is 103 miles to the next town, Salina, on I-70. That is the longest distance between any two towns with nothing in between on the entire US interstate system. This is a town of farmers and a few river outfitters, one of whom I work for. No one leaves there doors locked at night here, and there is almost no crime.

I also drive very rarely. About 5 times a summer I will drive into Colorado to guide a trip there, and maybe an equal number of times a summer I will drive to Moab, 50 miles away, to hang out with some friends. I live where I work, at a boathouse, and do not have a daily commute. So my driving occurs very rarely.

Despite the fact that I have moved to a safer, flatter, warmed, place, where I drive less, your company has chosen to raise my policy. I have no other conclusion I can reach except for the fact that you use your company to email misleading quotes to the very customers who pay your salaries, and use that to trick them into giving one of your representatives a phone call, where they then inform you your policy must now be higher than the one you are already paying.

I am very dissatisfied with Geico today, and I will be looking at other companies in the next month who will offer me a better deal. At that point in time I will cancel my financial relationship with your company. I am also going to publish this letter on my blog, http://laughingfish.blogspot.com , and I am going to tell all of my friends and co workers about my experience with your company and encourage them never to do business with it.

Sincerely,

Christian
Geico policy number XXXX-XX-XX-XX

--- On Tue, 7/5/11, GEICO wrote:


From: GEICO
Subject: Christian, your GEICO rate quote request
To: cawright2007@yahoo.com
Date: Tuesday, July 5, 2011, 8:43 AM

GEICO
Christian,

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Government Employees Insurance Company
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Message ID: NetQuote SNAP

The Show Goes On...

"A future generation of left leaders is being silenced. Gunned down in Norway. Beaten bloody in Cairo+Madrid. Locked up in Utah"

-Naomi Klein



The above quote was motivated by world events as well as a recent turn of events in Salt Lake City, where Tim DeChristopher, aka Bidder 70 was sentenced yesterday to 2 years in prison, beginning immediately, for his actions as a whistleblower who disrupted an oil and gas auction of BLM lands in 2008 that itself was later invalidated by the Department of the Interior. Here is his statement. It is worth reading. How many pallid lies and halfheartedness have you endured upon your ears to date about the failure of anyone in charge to do anything about climate change? It was high time to find something better to do with yourself anyways.

I recall, at times like this the many CEOs, stockbrokers, speculators and board of directors members I never met or knew or heard about whose consciously reckless actions had by 2008 resulted in my and your own unemployment. I think about how 99.999% of these people will never serve a fraction of the time in jail that Tim will. Most, it seems, have never even been shown the inside of a court room. But the dangerous precedent of Tim's economic monkey wrenching (which was later in essence agreed with and vindicated by the Federal Government) was too much to let off with a slap on the wrist!

Direct action against climate change? Indeed. What a principle that sets! A principle dangerous radicals like me have been arguing for for years- that the people of the world have other options besides either a) installing private solar panels they can't afford on the sides of homes they don't own, or b) doing nothing while private energy interests continue to amass fortunes on the basis of ecological catastrophe.

Impossible. Dangerous. Stomp it out. Crush it. Lock it up. Throw away the key.

Repression, yes. And thank you Namoi Klein for your quote, acknowledgment, and framing of this moment in its historical context. For rescuing me from my despair. For you see, I stopped to eat at the Wendy's restaurant in Vernal. And at the Wendy's restaurant in Vernal not one but two large flat screened TVs are required to keep the patrons supplied with the necessary input of FOX news coverage. This is, after all, the Uinta Basin: heart of Utah's oil and gas boom. And Mr. O'Reilly himself was up there, releasing into the atmosphere his trademarked exhaust of lies and bigotry. It seemed a Christian Fundamentalist Terrorist in Norway had decided to bomb and shoot several young Social-Democratic activists at a summer retreat.

Clearly, this was inconvenient to O'Reilly's most orthodox interpretation of religion and violence, and after approximately 2 minutes of discussing this shocking global event, the image on the screen changed to one of a crescent moon with a star on a red back ground and those menacing words: Muslim Terrorism. Or was it Muslim Extremism? Perhaps. But it did remain for the rest of the segment, and animate those beady eyes with a passion we'd otherwise have been all so much more the worse for missing out on. For clearly, convincing me that Muslim Terrorists are much greater of a threat to my existence that are Christian Terrorists is a much more important, and far nobler, undertaking than the actual reporting of the most violent and unfortunate political event to have occurred in perhaps the most peaceful and harmonious European country since the Second World War.

Yes, Mr. O'Reilly, you are a tricky fish.


So I have been, at the boat house here, discussing these matters. With my kind. And political ideas and thoughts have appeared and grown and become relevant with an intensity they do not, on average, possess in Green River, Utah, population 900. It was at this exact moment in time that a friend, via email, demanded I explain myself, for why, with such ideas, did I spend time in DC, and why, on earth, did I leave?

Much longer space, than this internet is capable of hosting, would be required for me to fully answer any such questioning comprehensively. But I did come up with a response, and not having written or discussed anything much political lately, we can go ahead and share it. For we do live in an age, of Future Left Leaders. And they are being silenced, gunned down, beaten bloody, and locked up. If being a Future Left Leader is such a hazardous occupation, and one apparently still necessary, it might be worth it to remind ourselves of why such things are necessary.

What ever happened to the Past Left Leaders? Why do we need new ones anyway?

Well friend... I will tell you about what I saw in Washington, DC. And why today I will have nothing to do with it. I'll share a few reminisces, as I'm taking a break from history writing and feeling fairly literary anyway...



I went to Washington, DC to study and learn about "Political Science." Largely, I was greatly frustrated, as over and over again I found the best "scientific" principles out there were ignored. Out of favor, completely, they were in those days of the Bush Administration. More carnal passions of greed, war, fear, and bigotry, the taking advantage of the weak by the strong, the meek by the boorish, were dominant. I was in the front lines then, of course, of the radical ferment. And lead I did as best I could my armies of radicalized students (and anyone else!) against that juggernaut of corruption and oppression. Time and again, it seemed, such energies would lapse into despair, as the first movements did not secure any quick victories. My peers at such time would retreat to their academics, and were more and more difficult to extract from the comfort of the dormitories.

And particularly so during an election year! Ah yes... how hard then were the straws of inevitable, liberal betrayal and failure so desperately clenched! And I saw it all with my own eyes, from my front row seat at the heart of movements... how the country's largest gay rights organization unleashed its armies of minimum wage staffers, volunteers, and other convinced do gooders to dismantle an incipient gay marriage movement in 2004- one that so arrogantly threatened to embarrass John Kerry for his inability to say the "M" word, and admit the voters he was taking for granted might themselves strongly feel their own civil rights were worth having today- rather than in some distant, post-election future.

Similar prostrations reverberated throughout the antiwar movement, as the leaders of those crumbling, factious organizations lifted as high as they could this candidate who was doing everything he could to repudiate his relevant past as a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. I was there with a small crowd outside the "Iraqi" embassy that November when the assault on Fallujah- postponed for just after the election- was underway. Quite a few Iraqi mothers, fathers, and children then- not wise enough to flee their homes on the eve of their liberation by our advancing armies- had their skin burned off those nights by the dumping of white prosperous onto civilian neighborhoods turned battle zones. Only a stunning, echoing silence was heard, from the shadows of the Kerry Campaign. The same timbre I might have heard more recently, as Israel killed a few thousand more civilians with 2009's bombing campaign in the Gaza strip, and Obama's vacant, stalling inertia, refused to intervene- much less take a stand- and put a stop to that madness. No. The shipments of bombs continue to this day- painfully unopposed.

That same year I do remember seeing at least one pretty inspiring sight. It was on the faces of over a million women who turned out on the mall in April for a rally to protect women's rights. Quite a few, young, attractive, militant proto-subversives were there, desperate to re-invigorate a real fight against sexism, abortion restrictions, discrimination in health care, and the like...

We had all the crowd we needed, for such a fight. Yes. But again, it was pacified, misled, and betrayed from the front. Madeline Albright was there, waving her feminist credentials, as the woman who said on 60 Minutes the murder of half a million Iraqi children by the slow strangulation of sanctions on that country was "worth it" to "contain" Saddam Hussein. Hillary Clinton made her appearance as well. Clearly, she never had much control over her husband- though I never recalled hearing any protests from her when he signed the "Defense of Marriage" Act, or came up with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" to officiate discrimination throughout the nation's largest workforce.

Maybe I'm getting too side tracked on different issues? Oh yes, here's one more relevant, abortion! Thank you Hillary, for leading this rally, after all your hard work to promote abortion as being ever more "safe, legal, and rare". Yes, rarer indeed it gets all the time, as states pass restrictions requiring teenage girls' conservative, religious, and/or incestuous parents to officiate their consent prior to their daughters' own exercise of control over their own bodies. Rare indeed, are abortions today, as few private health insurance plans will ever pay for them (though convenient indeed are their subsidies for viagra!). And difficult, yes... As over 80% of counties in the nation have no abortion provider, and the ones that do can be hard to get to past the crowds of exterior religious fanatics.

How eager I was for some sort of rejuvenation of the fight for this very basic human right, which I myself have with partners exercised twice in my life. Alas, it was not to be. No call for marches, community organizations, or clinic defense. No inspiring introduction of legislation. Nothing. Just vote John Kerry. Yes, thank you large pro-choice organization, for the "vote John Kerry" sign- I have so much to thank you for! Particularly for your careful documentation of legislative votes, which for 2003 showed that John Kerry only showed up to vote on 3 out of 11 abortion related bills that came up for consideration that year. To his everlasting credit, he did manage to vote the "correct" way all 27% of the time it mattered while he was a Senator!

Understand now, though, I am a kind of utopian, out of touch radical, dreamer, and idealist. My wishes and my vision of course is incompatible with the broader human nature- of ever being lead by anyone who will stand up to fight for you greater than 27% of the time!

I left... that place. The cesspool of corruption is very well spinning away on its own without me there to endure the vagueries of its own daily nuances and disappointments. I have little love lost, for the politicians, NGOs, or even the drug dealers who used to hang out on my stoop and sexually harass my girlfriends. I'll take my chances with the canyons, the rivers, white water, grizzly bears, and dehydration. Much safer here, in the heart of America. Escaping the horror, as I am, by burying myself in it!

Clearly, I still have a lot of opinions about all that. Politics. Yes. Is it frustrating that I am politically irrelevant here in rural Utah, with all these great ideas busting out of my head? Of course! But far less frustrating that actually living in a place like Washington, DC!

Then you may surprised to hear that I do have hope, still, for the country. Hope in the faces, words, and actions, of my kindred souls across America. The witty comments on facebook. The rides I got hitchhiking... largely from undocumented immigrants. The couch and five months of the backyard campsite when I was homeless. The volunteers at the food bank. The small protest. The radical students. The nutty professor. The guest lecturer, and the crowd that came to see him. Wind and Solar. Melon farmers. River guides. Amy Goodman. Lupe Fiasco.

Change comes to Washington, not from Washington. And usually, it stops, mired in the mud of legislative inertia, slime, and general bureaucratic gobbledygook, before it ever gets very far, or deep. We will see change come to Washington, one day, though only long after it has been accomplished most everywhere else. In the wake of a victorious, advancing, revolutionary army... or perhaps brought down by the wrath of Good God himself, peeling back the very flesh of the earth to swallow, bury, and efface that abomination, albeit in a grossly belated manner. I am not sure which is more likely to occur, or happen first... But I am sure, that tunneling in my own patient way across the heartland, I'll find a way to contribute, one way or another.

Like many, I suppose, my frustrations, passions, and desires build up privately, and release themselves through more discreet and acceptable channels, than the general strike or insurrection, for which I am finding it is required for the whole society to be in touch with its own energies and frustrations on a far more intimate and conscious way than any few radicals can, by their own energies, convince it to attain, by the simple day to day routines of low level attrition.

But that ought to be rather the point, isn't it?

Who wants to live in a world where everyone is a bystander? Resigned, marginalized, and silent! Where politics is left only to distant elections, money, and treacherous "experts" to screw up on our behalf? My fancy political credentials, I am sure, will one day rise, as Eugene Debs put it, "with the masses, not from the masses."

That then, I hope, is enough to answer your questioning about Washington, DC!


So let's hear it for Tim DeChristopher, those kids in Norway, Cairo, or anywhere else they're needed and stepping up. The world, desperately, is going to require more future left leaders than it presently has. Or had. As the case may be.

The Ripping of the Rivers' Tears

Last night I walked on down a trail
Along a rivers' edge
The red rock country lifted hearts
And stirred my spirits' end.
Three trips were camping by the shore
The one I happened find
Was being educated
On the matter of fine wines.


Fine wines from Malborough, New Zeland
Napa and Merlot, CA.
Elevation, soil and rain
Aeration, steel, oak and names
Were all that night to me explained.


Far off outside Durango
On a lonely Mesa hill
Frank's wife looks at the ashes
Still sitting on the sill.


We started with the Savingon
And then moved on to Oregon
Willamette, names once mis pronounced-
I now transcend those clumsy doubts!
A smile I shared, a sip of wine
A few more and a jug.
My tongue bit hard- I tasted blood
My jaw clenched dumb and snug.


I couldn't quite recall exact locations of details
That Bobs wife fought that time she heard
Bob's final will and wails.
What fragrant nose of sweet perfume
Of tannins, leather, spice-
Were fermenting in that garage
Of Bob's tormented life?


How small I wondered is the grape,
Growing through the sun and shade?
In perfect balance with the days
Being pinched (not moments late!)
The hands of experts will decide
The perfect ways to trim the time
On sunny hills of grass and sand
The Clos du Bois and Crawford brands...


Smaller still and how forgot
Such lives fraught with dreaded rot!
And left to wither on the vine
Unknown, unloved, and undivine
(Unemployed most of the time).


Some more and then 'twas time to go
Back up to my own tent and show
I thanked the hosts with words sincere
(It's all they'll ever know I fear!)
My mind weighed heavy with these thoughts
Such balance balanced in my cup
Such chaos reigning all around
It seems to overflow the towns.


No experts would they venture near
To study sacrifices dear
families, wives, surviving sons
Left behind the funeral drums
No proud service for the man
Who ended life by his own hands
When he was told "no work" again.


High and fast the flows this year,
Though tonight I'm nowhere near
I listen hard and strain to hear
The ripping of the rivers' tears
The subjects known and studied there.

Dying Bears and National Parks, Music, Iraq, Boris Badenov and Malcolm X

News capsule:

From James I got this witty gem, Everything Popular is Wrong: Making it in Electronic Music, Despite Democratization, a great analysis of trends that happened to music the past decade, which are all really key to understanding why I live in a cab over camper at the edge of the desert instead of still playing shows and selling records and having drinks with girls in black latex.

His grasp of what has happened is fantastic. However, for those looking for a happy ending to the story, I'll go ahead and ruin it for you.

"...Therefore there is a need to have sources of income that are independent from your own music’s direct returns. That is, any income that can be obtained with spending very little time on it — no day jobs allowed unless you are a grossly overpaid consultant for a few hours a month, like I am occasionally... Separating income and music in your head can be deeply rewarding. The freedom experienced in creating music to your own criteria first and even “against the market” if necessary is way more elegant than trying to squeeze as much as possible out of music that has to produce your paycheck. That is another factor contributing to an artist’s longevity in the market — having guts and principles. Get your head around it, do your homework and you’ll quickly see solutions that work for you."

Yes, indeed, that elegant freedom of my guts and principles, my laborious homework, the freedom experienced in creating music to my own criteria first. Mr. Goldmann's "solutions" for "separating income and music in your head" seem to retreat back to the author's own original thesis, that "Being a 'musician' is increasingly becoming a profession for those coming from inherited wealth or being mercantily exceptionally clever."

Sigh...

Then! Yellowstone National Park is experiancing a major ecosystem disruption but fourtunately the friendly Park Rangers are there to kill the starving bears when they break into your trash. Check out The Ghost Park

Those who've been trying desperately for years (and often, succeding?) to pretend the Iraq war doesn't exist or effect them and won't probably continue for longer should double check the recent march where A Million Marchers Tell the US To Get Out of Iraq by the End of 2011 or Else.

And finally, in your own philosophical grasping for a framework to put all these pieces together, let us first understand, and then dismiss, the fallout from that day When Alan Met Ayn... And Tanked Our Economy, before (hip) hopping on over to Roots Grow Deep's latest posting, On Masculinity and Homophobia Pt 1: A Reflection on Hip Hop, Malcolm, and More.