Getting Through It

It was during the recent rock & roll maelstrom when Peter G. generously minuted:

"You're a musician, fer chrissakes. Yeah, I know that every mope out there can sing along to the radio, but not everyone groks what Music is. Being able to take those funny golf clubs on the page and turn them into coherent sound is an important first step, I know, but it's not the whole package.

Most people don't know that sense of wonder and magic when everyone is on the same page with a shared vision. As I've told you before, I'm a classical guy, and there isn't any drug (nor will there ever be such a drug) that can substitute for that incredible sensation when a band or orchestra sets aside the individual and combines to be something greater.

It's a rare thing, and you need to cherish it when it happens. It's even rarer when it gets recorded: grab a copy of Leonard Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic literally rocking Rite of Spring.

Yeah, I visit daily, and yeah, I'm disappointed when there isn't a new post, but don't you dare apologize for lack of posting when you're doing what you love, what you (and I) live for. Feed your soul and don't worry about us. We'll be here when the suckitude of life brings you back to the keyboard."

Here's one thing that I think: if I were a real -- mind, body, heart and soul -- musician, then I would ignore everything else and produce the serious blues album that the times call for.

Who is going to do that? Whose heart is breaking for America, who can also crystallize all that in a statement fitted to the tragedy? An entire culture sunk in delusion and mendacity, eating itself one bite at a time from neighbor to neighbor, now pitched against each other in competing visions of mutual slavery -- where the plain-day principle of freedom once guided the best of our aspirations.

If that's not enough to leave "a good man feeling bad," then I guess it would take nothing short of the actual war that every good man should dread with all his heart.

It's all got me feeling badly enough, alright. I just don't know how I would find the capacity to address it justly.

All I've got around here is just day-to-day. This is not an easy thing. Forever, I have understood that what I see and have to say about it would never be a very popular outlook.

I was recently informed of word from an old and long-lost friend who, in conversation with another old friend, asked about me, "Is he normal to talk to? I mean, I thought the whole Ayn Rand/libertarian thing would have been just a phase." (Yes, Joanne, honey: I have always recalled you fondly, and I gently remind you that discretion is not one of our old friend's most ringing attributes. You should drop me a line. I'd love to catch up.) And the question naturally arises to me: am I the one who's supposed to apologize for holding freedom as my first political value?

Never.

It's just that this shit's been pretty expensive over a whole lifetime, and this is not an unlimited account.

Day by day.