Neil Young, 1970-71

Phil Dellio on the massively expensive Neil Young Archives box set (first installment!). It's still too rich for me but this does make me want to take some Neil on my road trip and replace my old bootleg cassette copy of Massey Hall as soon as possible.

The Embarrassment go with the Force--

Currently playing: "Don't Stop Until You Get Enough," The Embarrassment

The Black Van Gogh

don’t stop until you get enough

“Listen up and I’ll tell you a story/about an artist growing old/some artists go for fame and glory/some artists aren’t so bold.”-Daniel Johnston

Michael Jackson was so bold. His rocket to fame may have been fueled by terror but it was blazingly bold terror. Prince of Disco. A West Side Story for the MTV 80s. Military regalia that made him look like a dictator from a Third World country.(Or for awhile there maybe it was all the TW dictators wanted to look like Michael?!) But w/ one white, sequined glove, of course. Jackson was the man who would be king. The self-proclaimed: King of Pop. And if you’re talking numbers who, beyond Elvis Presley and the Beatles, both with considerable headstarts, could possibly contest his crown? Thriller sold more than a 100 million records. The next closest is AC/DC’s Back In Black with 45 million. MJ more than doubles the rest of the field.

A friend complained to me recently ab not being able to connect w/ the 24-7 coverage of Jackson’s death. Glorifying a pedophile, was his objection, basically. I blustered back ab what a singularly brilliant icon of American entertainment he was, blah, blah, forgiveness, blah, blah, and then dismissed his post-Thriller music as strained, stuck in caricature. Typical second-hand rock snob humbuggery.

Truth is beyond the biggest singles I barely knew his post-Thriller music. I’d never heard until recently the three albums he put out after Bad (’88): Dangerous (‘91), Blood On The Dance Floor (although I know some or most of this material from the History Part 2 CD) (’96), and Invincible (’01). Truth is I felt squeamish ab Jackson myself. But I turned him off before the pedophilia soap opera began.*

For me, it was his evolving/devolving/mutating appearance. He looked like a freakish plastic surgery casualty. I think I even remember the video where I turned away: “Remember The Time,” or if that’s the one where he and some perfect African model are Egyptian pharaohs or some such. He looked like he was wearing a creepy Diana Ross theater mask. I cringed looking at him, shocked by what he’d done to his appearance. Forever after I’d channel surf past him faster than you can say Jerry Springer Show.

But then the day he died I started playing his music again. We grew up together, for goodness sake. "ABC" on TV is one of my most exciting early pop memories. When I was living in group houses in the '80s he was moonwalking. He’s barely a year older than me. “Don’t Stop Til I Get Enough,” “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” “Human Nature,” “Man In The Mirror,” “Smooth Criminal,” etc. The guy completely invented post-disco RnB. He ate hiphop for lunch and then served it as an after-dinner dessert. But I’d played all those songs silly when they came out. I wondered what the hell he has been doing musically for the last twenty years?!

So I’ve been checking out MJ’s 90s and beyond music. I was familiar with more of this inspriational stuff than I expected in that way we pick up massively popular music in the air, radio, out of cars, in malls, dentist offices, on the street. It's astonishing how many of his lyrics from this period directly fuel the tabloid soap opera. Sings MJ in “In The Closet,” from Dangerous, “Something about you baby that makes me want to give it to you/just promise me whatever we say or do/ you’ll keep it in the closet.” But then he throws everybody off by using female pronouns. Right. Makes me wonder if his lyrics were ever used evidence against him in the child abuse trials? He sounds increasingly embattled and isolated; he is part of the culture but sounds a part from it too, both solipcistic and universal.

At any rate he was definitely NO musical caricature of his former self in the 90s. There is no sign of decline until at least 2001’s Invincible and then that’s arguable. During the 90s his music in several ways expanded, growing in variety and depth.

His funk rocks harder than ever. Check out “Who Is It,” “Give In To Me,” the aforementioned, “In The Closet,” or “This Time Around.” Play these songs up against your favorite grunge, Nine Inch Nails, or whatever hard rock from the same period. Nothing as classic as “Billie Jean” but they stretch his rock inclinations without sounding like retreads. They feel less like a crossover novelty than “Thriller.” They are angry Michael w/ angry guitars.

His inspirational balladry, a weakness in his solo work of the 70s and 80s (“We Are The World” aroused the first MJ backlash, as I recall), grows in depth and songcraft: “Heal The World,” “Keep The Faith,” “Gone Too Soon,” “Earth Song” “You Are Not Alone,” “History.” Sure, there’s a lot of Hallmark card sentiment in these songs but I find their let’s-all-sing-together gospel fervor more uplifting than “God Bless America” at post-9/11 baseball games. In every one of them it’s as if he were trying to top that gospelly Coke commercial, "we'd like to give the world a coke," in hand-holding pop universality.Pleading for unity over cynicism is fine by me w/ a nice melody or beat.

What stands out in this period as something different for Mike are these personal songs like “Stranger in Moscow” and “Childhood” going gothic. This is music not quite like anything he’s done— uber-loungy Judy Garland-Barbara Streisand-Nelson Riddle-Robert Plant baroque pop elegance— and he totally owns it, as good as my beloved Dusty Springfield doing “What Are You Doing With the Rest of Your Life” or any other song I’ve heard in this style. His vocals soar, delicate as gossamer wings, dramatic as Liz Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, plucking and dropping intimate flower petals of melody in a slow hypnotic dance, like some pied piper of the apocaplypse. Compare these w/ ballads from his early period, “She’s Out Of My Life” or “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You.” In the 90s his voice assumes a heft and virtuosic richness unavailable to him before. His singing is stunning.

On the other hand, “Childhood” also stands out as a song in which he takes head-on the tabloids attacks: “People say I’m not okay/because I love such elementary things/It’s been my fate to compensate for the childhood I’ve never known” and “Before you judge me/try hard to love me/the painful youth I’ve had/look in your heart/and then ask/have you seen my childhood?” Yeah, but like Kimya Dawson says, “Having been fucked is no excuse for being fucked up,” either. She also suggests, in her songs "My Heroes," if MJ is guilty "off w/ his balls." All I know for sure is if he is guilty this has to be one of the creepiest great songs I’ve ever heard.

When he isn’t singing, he resorts to his post-JB jams. Pre-hiphop and anti-dance music people will never get this stuff but it's MJ’s bread and butter, really. Sure, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” and “Bad” and “Jam” are repetitious. But as long as you feel the force “keep on with the force don’t stop,” just like Michael says. And through the 90s he does not disappoint. Check out album tracks like “Can’t Let Her Get Away” and “Money” “2Bad.” He works the rhythm like it were an exorcism— his kinetic dance energy feverishly masterful. It's always state-of-the-art funky, incorporating current Rnb trappings and then showing the way. At his best, MJ makes the pleasure of rhythm feel involuntary and this will probably last as his greatest aesthetic achievement.

My overall sense is that his post-Bad records will eventually grow in reputation with his death. He's been set free and so has his music. Only Invincible starts to feel merely ordinary in Jackson terms. (Which means it was probably strikingly better than most pop long players put out that year. And talk about star-crossed: the guy puts out a record called Invincible a month after 9/11!) Dangerous and Blood On The Dance Floor, or what I know of the latter from History Part 2, are as unique and musically rewarding as Thriller or any other record he has made.

None of this is to suggest I haven’t had trouble following the TV coverage, too. I don’t want to see the dangling-baby-over-the-balcony scene ever again. He was unhinged, no question. I don’t know how anybody takes that many drugs. I don’t want to watch Joe Jackson plugging his new record label, again. I prefer seeing MJ at one of his last public events, the announcement of his proposed upcoming 50 shows in London. He’s decked out in an Elvis Presley shirt and hair, Ross fright mask, giving some Nixonesque peace signs. And then into a Kung Fu fighting stance he works the crowd with some grunts and stomps like he really believed he was going to do it to them all over again, as only the king of pop could.

And the best eulogy I’ve heard so far comes from radio talk show host Bev Smith on a News Hour last week. Brought on the show to defend all the MJ memorial coverage (how could Jackson be given more coverage than the cap and trade system being discussed in congress? groused a panel opponent), Ms. Smith would not give an inch, concluding one of her segments with “He’s our Van Gogh” or something to that clear effect.

The black Van Gogh sounds about right to me: Michael Jackson R.I.P.


*(So he's a pedophile? Duh, the guy built a theme park for pre-pubes in his backyard! The evidence as to whether he hurt children is not clear to me, although I’m no expert on the literature. But, I gather, nor are most those positively sure he’s a perverted monster.)

Currently playing: Michael Jackson

Need a life? Plenty of folks are willing to share their’s online.

From Melody McDonald in the Seattle Times:.

“Experts say social-networking junkies — people consumed with e-mailing, texting, tweeting, blogging, podcasting and videoing — are everywhere. They're college students, marketing professionals and journalists. They're attention-seeking extroverts and anxiety-ridden introverts. They're young; they're old."

My blogging isn't an addiction yet but it certainly does feel a little silly. No one is reading this. (Or this or that or laugh or don’t or think or don’t or tell me why or don’t or keep it to yourself or I don’t care that much. Do what you can, okay?) It’s a message in a bottle. It’s scrawlings on this bathroom wall, public restroom. (But no one writes back!) I’m part of none of the groups from which most social-networking junkies belong. I’m an attention- seeking introvert. And I’m old but not “old.” I’m like a blogging Yosemite Sam, “Where the hell is everybody, dagnabbit?” If I could only get Shaq to twitter ab me I’d be really big, living large. But is that what I really want?

Currently playing:Wilco a ghost is born

1969: A Space Odyssey

An A.O. Scott essay ostensibly ab Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey but in which said film is barely directly referenced. This is, however, not such a bad thing. He historicizes the film’s release in 1969, the year a man walked on the moon. It’s in the Space & Cosmos section of the paper. (BTW, 6% of Americans today believe the moon landings were faked.)

Currently playing:Fucked Up The Chemistry of Common Life

Art Thiel on the surprising success of the M’s through first half of 2009:

The M’s are unexpectedly over .500, 46-42, at the all-star break. So why not give some credit to the new coach and the new general manager. And, sure, throw in there some praise for the veteran clubhouse leadership of our depleted former stars, Ken Griffey jr. and Mike Sweeney, as Thiel does. But let’s also not forget to mention the most miraculously successful hitting by a handful of guys hitting close to or below the Mendoza (that's .200, as in NOT good non-baseball fans)line I’ve ever seen. They only hit when you absolutely need them to. It's uncanny. Now let’s hope they can keep this up all year!

Currently playing:"The Way You Make Me Feel," Michael Jackson

Too big to fail is socialism for the rich—

and who is and who isn’t too big to fail anyway?

Currently playing:Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy

Goldman Sachs- Up, Everyone Else- Down!

During the second quarter Goldman Sachs recorded the biggest quarterly profits in the institution’s 140 year history, while unemployment, pushing 10%, reached its highest point in three decades. Isn’t the amount, the humongous dwarfing scale, of financial investment profits on Wall Street that— and this is key— do NOT CREATE JOBS on Main Street an important, crucial, if not the biggest long-run, problem with the economy?

Currently playing:Flying Saucer Attack Rural Pychadelia

Leveraging success one customer at a time

I just saw the CEO of the reconstituted GM, Mr. Fritz Henderson, on the News Hour. It was like a scene from a Christopher Guest movie: imagine a folk music record executive, from A Mighty Wind, talking about coming back from bankruptcy. “Smoking hot!” Can’t find the video but here’s a taste from another recent Fritz presentation.

Currently playing:"Can't Let Her Get Away," Michael Jackson

Unsung Heroes of the Collapse

Banker's Holiday Continues, Part 8 (or 9)--
“Four of the [Banking] industry’s top trade groups spent nearly as much on lobbying in the first three months of this year as they did in all of 2001.” Stepehen Laboton, NY Times, 6/4/09


End of school: grading, graduation, and goodbyes. Gawd, I hate goodbyes. Kids have the get-out-of-jail-free smiles plastered on their faces since Memorial Day. They don’t want to sit through lessons about racism as a justification for economic exploitation during the age of imperialism; Kipling’s “the white man’s burden,” etc. “Yeah, right, Mr. T, can we have our party now?” RIF-d (i.e., “reduction in force,” a euphemism for you no longer have a job) teachers shuffle out the door wondering what they did wrong (nothing), blaming older teachers that don’t work as hard as they do. Everyone else heads home, again, shaking their heads.

This year’s graduates, the first batch at my school I taught as 9th graders, were especially touching as they crossed the dais with their diplomas, looking simultaneously like they’d been shot out of a happy cannon and totally unsure of where the hell they were going. Politicians like to huff and puff about our failing public schools (usually as a pretext for cutting funding and implementing some punitive accountability measures), but this year’s grads are better prepared for what lies ahead than I ever was, at least as smart as my generation, and a whole lot smarter than the collective stupidity of this country’s leadership since I graduated from high school.

But those goodbyes. I freeze up tight. I fear I'll explode in tears; red face, snot, choked up, “I’ll really miss you, man!” So I really have to psych myself up to make it through w/ the right degree of stoic composure, ‘onward and upward, summer adventures, don’t forget me when you make it big, fond farewell and pip pip cheerio.’ And, still, I probably reflexively do a little avoidance. But I muddle through, hug someone too tight, gush too much after a couple beers, but I make it through another year w/ my stodgy dignity more or less intact: happy to collaborate and learn from students and colleagues and do what I can to give kids a little leg up and over on their way who knows where, to English literacy and world citizenry! The stuff of teacherly hopes. But I still hate the goodbyes.

So, at any rate, I haven’t had any time (or emotional energy) for writing for awhile but I’ve followed the news on the economy some. (I can’t help myself.) Sorry to say, if you haven’t noticed (and if you follow only TV reports you might not have), but our side is losing. Sure, the stock market is rebounding, banks credit is loosening. Unfortunately, unemployment continues to grow (pushing 10%), there’s no certain ebb to the tide of mortgage foreclosures yet, and there are more blue hairs working at Fred Meyers. But Wall Street’s confidence in its ability to continue fleecing the public is rising, so things are getting back to normal. Some catch-up.

preposterous hopes— too big to fail?

Maybe foolish but there really did appear to be an opportunity in this economic crash, because of its shocking severity (“apple pie and Chevrolet,” the latter just went bankrupt!), to see some real political-economic reform. At minimum, some basic national antitrust wakeup call to the effect that private banks and corporations “too big to fail” are a threat to democracy and nothing more than a “socialism for the rich.” If a business is too big to fail then make it public, and so politically accountable, or reduce and limit its size so that it cannot become too big to fail. To fail to make this correction makes a massive shell game mockery of our democratic system, one that people recognize (here and abroad) even if they don’t understand the complexities of the economy.

banks win, consumers lose

It’s embarrassing, really. Despite promises and rhetoric to the contrary, Obama has given in to the status quo on Wall Street. Lawmakers who have discussed the issue with the administration say the president’s senior aides concluded that a battle with Wall Street was simply not worth the cost. What aides? His guys from Wall Street, Geithner and Summers? What costs? Their friends in banking, their investments?

It’s so galling you couldn’t make this stuff up. The economy tanks, demand plummets. The government pours trillions of dollars into saving the financial sector, instead of nationalizing and reorganizing it. So out of gratitude the banks sit on the money because they don’t want to start lending until they know the full extent of the damage from the housing crash. And then at the first signs of stabilizing markets they begin raising staff salaries, again, and rates on customers (you know, to cover their costs from losses in the housing market). Meanwhile, the O Team finally gets around to some “compromised” regulatory reform proposals (being furthered by galling bank interests as I write) that, mostly, will increase the power of the Federal Reserve to police Wall Street, which is like asking Miller Brewing to police drunk driving.

The proposed regulations do nothing structurally about the size of those private profiteers too big to fail and little about the shadow banking and “off balance sheet entities” that mark the most grotesque dishonesty of the banking crisis. According to those that know better, the proposal to require some skin-in-the-game (5%, reportedly)from loan operators is laughably insufficient. No one has been more wrong in the run-up to this collapse than credit-rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor's. And, yet, not a peep about reforming these institutions. Nor a word about limiting the “brokered deposits” or “hot money” that has destroyed many regional banks.

The administration’s talk about consumer protection, see Geithner on Meet The Press, seems like token public relations. (Throw the dogs a bone, watch them scurry after it.) Curbing predatory credit card practices is welcome but small potatoes compared to losing your job or home or pension. Obama made promises about helping save people’s homes from foreclosure and then abandoned those plans to a congress full court pressed by the banks. (How, at this point, you might wonder, increduously, could the unpopular banks exert this kind of influence? I don't know but I bet it has something to do w/ money.) Consumers trying to hang-on to their homes are lost in the black hole maw of the mortgage servicing industry: a Kafkaesque labyrinth of customer service reps, a system mismanaged and overwhelmed by the demands put on it. Meanwhile, the banks squeeze another cool $13 billion in “bailout” money out of a congressional bill intended, in the President’s words, to “stand up to the Special Interests, and stand up for the American people.”

Bernie Madoff’s Wall Street

Mad greedy Bernie Madoff goes to jail for 150 years. Yes. It’s like dunking some asshole at a county fair. But let’s remember Madoff was NOT some rogue operator or extreme aberration on Wall Street. He was an insider’s-insider, a respected confident to the head of the Securities Exchange Commission. Madoff helped set the rules. For goodness sakes, if insider expertise was what’s needed to save the economy than Bernie Madoff would have made a better (or at least more honest) choice to join the O-team than Geithner and/or Summers. And it’s hard to imagine, grand larceny thief that he is, how he could have advised any more favorable terms for Wall Street than those two supposedly paragons of business propriety.

Obama explains the collapse thusly: "A culture of irresponsibility took root from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street. And a regulatory system basically crafted in the wake of a 20th century economic crisis--the Great Depression--was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st century global economy."

And William Greider responds: “That is not what happened, to put it charitably. Unlike some other presidents, Obama is much too intelligent not to know this. The regulatory system was not overwhelmed by historic forces. It was systematically gutted and dismantled by the government in Washington at the behest of the banking interests.”

Banking interests from which Madoff was not an exception but a leading light. They believed in the wonder of securitization, investments without risk, based on inscrutable formulas and off the books trading. It’s guys playing with other people’s money, with said people totally oblivious until it is too late. So that’s their own damn fault, say P.T. Barnum capitalists. But is playing suckers really the kind of “business model” we need or want? I wouldn’t think so but, to this point, the O Team has done everything they can to mask the problem and jumpstart the banker’s game of bubbles and busts. More casino capitalism for everybody!

In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi (The Great American Bubble Machine), already identifies the new bubble sector as the carbon cap-and-trade still being ironed out in congress.

apologies and promises

Obama apologists will argue he’s too busy with health care or creating this carbon trading system to take on the banks. But if he’s doing this alone then we’re lost. And if he cannot put some people on the job to make sure the right thing gets done in congress in support of new bank rules and forestalling more home foreclosures then he does not possess the leadership we need. Come on, all the talk about standing up for Main Street, while turning a blind eye to cutthroat Wall Street deal-making, after already giving these guys the farm and then some, is contemptible.

Reagan Did It

Of course, Obama did not make the deregulatory mess our financial system is in but he’s enmeshed in a wonky conservative account of the crisis. It was Alan Greenspan, as Fed Chair, with Ben Bernanke’s help, who, back in the High Tech bubble recession of ’01-’02, reduced interests rates too much, setting the stage for the housing bubble. Or the one I heard the other day, the crash was caused by government over-reaction to the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers in September. (Apparently, the trillions the public have put into the financial system has been necessary only because the government started a panic!) These aren’t credible explanations for the scale and systemic reach of this economic downturn, but they support the status quo economic policies coming out of the Wall Street-Washington axis.

So where did this whole mess really start? Krugman nails it on the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, of 1982. This is some Reagan supported legislation that deregulated standards on debt-to-asset ratios and led directly to the Savings & Loan collapse of the late-80s. And, most importantly, it inaugurated a “free market” revolution of deregulation and privatization and tax cuts for the rich and a general drift towards levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age. The Reagan Revolution. And it ended as a credible economic model, even if some haven’t got the memo yet, in the crash last fall.

More Chapters

As an epic novel the crisis has entered one of those long, digressive passages in Moby Dick. Emerging are the stories of forgotten heroes like Brooksley Born and Sheila Bair and Elizabeth Warren (pictured above). I don’t know what to make yet of the preponderance of women fighting the good fight here. I hope there are more of them to step up, though.

community services and the free market religion

Locally, it would seem the free market religion still holds sway. Tax revenues are down so the state budget was slashed. You might expect some politicians to question a tax base structure that puts such basic community services as police, health care, and education at the mercy of the ups and downs of the market but I haven’t heard a word.

It seems like the same old game. Russel Investments, for example, is this huge investment services firm-- homebased, or up to now, in Tacoma—who manages $136 billion in assets from 147 countries. Because Russel has been talking about moving, local congressman, Norm Dicks, has pledged more than $148 billion to keep them in Tacoma. (And Gov. Gregoire will chip in another $700,000.) You have to wonder how the math here adds up to benefit the local community? What it appears to be is the same old state and municipal groveling to win favor with big corporations in hopes for some growth trickle down.

Which brings me back to where I started following this crazy mess last summer. I’ve supported government spending because I hate to see people lose their jobs or homes or pensions. I watched people lose jobs this spring and I felt bad for them. I do not know what I’d do if in their place; I’d really feel lost. Or if my parents lost their pensions, it’d be very hard on them. These are hardships I would not wish on anybody. But these wishes beg the question as to how much longer this growth economy, that I hope the government can revive, can be sustained?

People have been raising this question for a long time and been dismissed as hippy-dippy Chicken Littles for a long time as well but the signs of stress on climate and our food and water supply have multiplied in the last decade more than anyone expected. It is becoming increasingly apparent to all that we cannot continue to consume resources as we have indefinitely, and the rate of per capita consumption in our country cannot be extended to the billions in China and India without dire consequences for the planet.

The grandeur of “free market” theory is based on the delusion of a perpetual motion machine. It fails to account for the finite energy sources it needs as inputs or the impact of the wastes it generates as outputs. From a broad view what we’re experiencing economically are pressures, breakdowns caused by debt (investments in the future) growing faster than our ability to produce real wealth. We’re pushing up against Malthusian limits (the days of cheap energy are numbered) and need another green revolution to stretch those limits. But at the moment it’s hard to imagine how this need can be reconciled with an economic growth model based on ever increasing demand and consumption.

muddling through

Back in the day my friend Pam and I used to go for these long walks after work. Ranting, laughing, shaking our heads at the office drama, upside-down politics, the impossibly Dilbertian people that filled our work lives. We developed a ritual in these conversations where at some point one of us would, sigh, and exclaim as to the wonder that the world keeps spinning, that people don’t stop in the street and go stark raving mad from the upside down craziness of it all. Something like Peter Finch in Network, I suppose we imagined. We settled on this little ritual as an ironic punctuation mark on our ravings: because at the end of the day what always astonished us most was that, despite all the dysfunctional drama of our workplace, our programs and organization always seemed to muddle through. And that seems true of the world, too: it seems to muddle through just like us. You have to wonder, though, how long this can last.

Currently playing:"Tell Me," The Rolling Stones

Happy Birthday, America!

I Hear America Singing, by Walt Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics--each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat--the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench--the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter's song--the ploughboy's, on his way in the morning,
or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother--or of the young wife at work--or of the girl sewing or washing--Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day--At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.


America, by Cluade McKay

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate.
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time's unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.

America, by Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.


Obama and I do email (although I get the eerie feeling he isn’t reading mine)—
Jack --

This weekend, our family will join millions of others in celebrating America. We will enjoy the glow of fireworks, the taste of barbeque, and the company of good friends. As we all celebrate this weekend, let's also remember the remarkable story that led to this day.

Two hundred and thirty-three years ago, our nation was born when a courageous group of patriots pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that all of us were created equal.

Our country began as a unique experiment in liberty -- a bold, evolving quest to achieve a more perfect union. And in every generation, another courageous group of patriots has taken us one step closer to fully realizing the dream our founders enshrined on that great day.

Today, all Americans have a hard-fought birthright to a freedom which enables each of us, no matter our views or background, to help set our nation's course. America's greatness has always depended on her citizens embracing that freedom -- and fulfilling the duty that comes with it.

As free people, we must each take the challenges and opportunities that face this nation as our own. As long as some Americans still must struggle, none of us can be fully content. And as America comes ever closer to achieving the perfect Union our founders dreamed, that triumph -- that pride -- belongs to all of us.

So today is a day to reflect on our independence, and the sacrifice of our troops standing in harm's way to preserve and protect it. It is a day to celebrate all that America is. And today is a time to aspire toward all we can still become.

With very best wishes,

President Barack Obama

July 4th, 2009

P.S. -- Our nation's birthday is also an ideal time to consider serving in your local community. You can find many great ideas for service opportunities near you at http://www.serve.gov.

Reply: Thanks for the holiday wishes, President Obama. Right, I should do more, I’ll get right on that. BTW, could you ask your friends on Wall Street to do a little more to serve their communities— as opposed to extorting money from them? A more perfect union means you have to stop this long cycle of fucking over the little guy with deregulatory greed and regressive taxes. More equality, less greedy hustle. Be sure who your friends are, Mr. President. Thank you very much. Best, Jack.


Currently playing: "Poker Face," Lady Gaga