Well…NOW look what you’ve gone and made me do, BooMan.
Make a diary out of a comment I wrote on one of my own diaries. One that was an answer to one of YOUR diaries. We are getting close the the blogging equivalent of incestuous onanism here.
However…
BooMan wrote a diary called Can’t Win for trying where he compared the left’s strenuous and mostly losing labors over the past 60+ years or so to the travails of poor Sisyphus and his rock in Greek mythology (Complete with references to Jean Paul Sartre’s take on the subject), and I answered with one of my own.
BooMan: Sisyphus SINNED. We just sleep.
To which a number of people responded by saying that perhaps I do not “get” Sartre. Complete with quotes.
Oh, I get him, OK, kiddies…in fact, I read him when he was alive and still chasing young sailors down the Rue Madeleine or wherever he practiced his relativism. I just do not in this case agree with the idea of applying Sartre’s “Sisyphus as existential hero” version of the myth to our position as we teeter on the precipice of fascism and possible Armageddon.
Sartre also said that the Nazi occupation allowed the French the luxury of free thought.
Well…THIS one won’t be so luxurious.
Hard to think in a nuclear firestorm, and hard to resist when 85% of the country is in some kind of hypnotic trance.
We’ve got to get real here, folks.
NOW.
Before it’s too late.
Too many intellectual games going on.
The RatPubs USE this.
Read on, if you’ve a mind to…
Y’know, BooMan…when I read Sartre…and when I read such deep thinkers as yourself as well…I am often reminded of a lesson I learned from a great jazz musician.
Houston Person.
Never heard of him?
You ain’t been listening with them GOOD ears, then.
Not a famous intellectual figure even in the jazz world…just a true player. A black tenor player with real southern roots who is now probably well into his 70s and who for 50 years has made a steady living playing…the blues.
The JAZZ blues, which is harmonically and rhythmically a whole ‘nother level beyond the simpler blues forms.
Sophisticated music that has not lost its common sense.
Its soul.
Its connection with working people.
So here we are…a fine big band of NY jazz players, rehearsing for a concert celebrating the sophisticated (and decidedly NON-bluesy, in its original intent) music of Harold Arlen. (Over the Rainbow, It’s Only A Paper Moon, Stormy Weather, I’ve Got the World on A String…YOU know. STANDARD standards.)
With Houston Person as the featured soloist.
Now Houston doesn’t talk a lot.
He’s a big man…wide receiver, NBA shooting guard big..and he looks and sounds as if he’s leaning against an invisible wall while he’s playing. Every note relaxed, from the heart and true. And the arrangements and band were fine as well. So we were just sailing along, getting the cues straight, etc. About an hour and a half into the rehearsal, however, we ran into a little roadblock. The bass player, who although VERY good is also somewhat renowned for being a little…fussy (A little too thinky, not enough feely sometimes)…stops the band on this one chart and starts a discussion about how the rhythm section should be approaching the time feel. Should it be straighter eighth notes, more or less of a shuffle feel, etc. This goes on for about 5 minutes, the arranger/conductor trying to reason w/the rhythm section (to little effect) and Houston just leaning back against his invisible wall up there in front of the band.
Waiting.
Until finally he straightened up a little, turned around to face the band, and said quite clearly and slowly “HEY man. It’s JUST the blues!!! Let’s take it from the top. ” And he counted it off. “2-3-4.”
You can intellectualize about Sisyphus all you want. I’ll bet HE did some heavy thinking around the 27th millennium of his endless task as well.
But it’s just the blues, BooMan..
It’s just the blues.
It’s REAL simple.
You…and almost the entire REST of the left…continue pushing the wrong rock up the wrong hill.
You’re a rock junkie. And you use intellectualization as a denial tool.
“ME??? I’M not a rock junkie!!! I’M a deep thinker!!! This rock rolling is just what I do to get my exercise whilst I’m a’thinkin’.”
Bullshit.
Kick cold turkey or die like a dog.
It really IS that simple.
Do it or not.
“Take it from the top….2-3-4.”
One more time.
Please.
Roll that ol’ rock on down the hill and never EVER go back to push it up again.
It’s ONLY the blues!!!
Go on out and play it.
It’s only a new set of dues.
Go on out and pay them.
Your union has proven itself to be incompetent and useless over the last 50 years.
Go out and join a better one.
Or start your own if you have to.
In the end…you be bettah off.
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.-Frederick Douglass
Maybe we need a BluesMan Tribune instead.
Like the bass player mentioned above, the left tends to be “…a little too thinky, not enough feely” sometimes.
Yup.
Comments?
Recs?
Remember the Dizzy Gillespie for President campaigns?
Yup.
Let me be the first to throw his hat in the ring.
Houston Person for President!!!
Slogans of the year?
“HEY man. It’s JUST the blues!!!”
and
“Let’s take it from the top “
Yup.
Later…
AG
with spelling and grammar corrected:
You clearly haven’t understood a word of the diary that inspired your two diaries.
The point of Camus’s essay is that life is unavoidably tragic and our actions are inescapably vain. We are condemned to push the rock up the hill only to see it roll back down.
You can’t push the wrong rock, in fact, you have no choice in the matter.
If you gain one level of awareness, such as yours, you will discover the vanity, but not the inescapability of the vanity. Therefore, you may latch onto some panacea that might put an end to the absurdity.
Like a Madman in the Marketplace, you may hold up a lantern and ask people to wake up and see that all is vanity. Or you may come up with some “manual of happiness” including a Newstrike or a third party.
That shows your awareness has only made a first step. There are no panaceas. There is only the struggle. And the struggle, when it becomes conscious, is tragic.
The next step is not to care that it is tragic. And to choose joy in defiance of the Gods.
You promote apathy. You do not show the way to joy.
Lastly, the Democratic Party is my vehicle for change precisely because I recognize the impossibility of perfection as well as the futility of dividing an already neutered left.
BushCo. is not more of the same. They are the worst administration in our modern history. I’m not willing to play games with third parties to teach the wrong party a lesson.
(Also spelling corrected.)
As you wish.
MY take on it is that it is a NEGATION of effort.
You CAN push the wrong rock; you DO have a choice in the matter, and there is NO joy in Mudville when Mighty Casey habitually strikes out.
Sorry, BooMan.
One reason that the left has so badly lost here is JUST this attitude.
It the the attitude of those who have lost faith in evolution.
HUMAN evolution.
Or who at the very least think that evolution will continue without their conscious efforts to change things.
So just go push ANY rock. It’s the effort hat counts.
No.
Not in MY neighborhood.
If you practice the wrong scales all of your life you simply will never play like Charlie Parker.
And playing on that level IS desirable.
Else…why bother?
In the service of the Inscrutable All?
I think not.
SCRUTABLE all that!!!
It’s JUST the blues, BooMan.
Once you really understand that fact things get much…simpler.
And more efficient too.
bet on it.
If this note doesn’t work so well…repeatedly…then TRY ANOTHER NOTE!!!
Or…from the undermind of America as expressed in vaudeville comedy:
Silly patient: “Doc!!! It hoits when I do DIS!!!” (Raisng his arm above his head.
Silly doctor: “Don’t DO dat!!!”
Yup.
Duh.
If it’s called common sense…how come it’s so goddamned rare?
AG
P.S. From one who just wrote a diary bemoaning the fact that he seems stuck with pushing a Sisyphean rock yet one more exhausting time up a seemingly endless hill, the words “You clearly haven’t understood a word” regarding ANYBODY else ring more than a little…unseemly, BooMan.
Hollow, even.
“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Vince Lombardi
Yup.
“Fools, too.” Arthur Gilroy
Yup
as you! Were you not, just the other day, waxing positively lyrical over the same Senator Feingold who is BooMan’s own preferred?
Had you not even forsaken the redoubtable Hilary to toss your marigolds at his shrine, so impressed you were with his strong support of US policy regarding Israel, and his pragmatic and no-nonsense stand on what a danger Iran is, how America must not permit such nations to have weapons?
Granted, none of us knows by 2008, even making some very large assumptions about the health of the status quo in the intervening two years, how many additional crusades and invasions and occupations he, or any politician of any party will be charged with presenting to the American voters.
Still, during such early days as this, what does it mean when two devotees of the same potential candidate cannot agree?
And who DO you admire, DuctTape?
Must admiration be unreserved?
Are you waiting for the final victory march?
Wait on.
Ain’t gonna happen.
AG
Nor am I required to. Americans are not really required to admire them either, but they have been so thoroughly indoctrinated to the contrary that it is a moot point.
No victory march is final. Arthur, however from time to time, corrections are inevitable. Were this not so, you would be speaking Latin today. Unless you were speaking Mongolian. Or Farsi.
Empires fall, and Frederick Douglass was right.
So you too wash your hands of the whole affair.
The Pompous Pilot flew the ship right into the abyss.
Buh-bye…
America’s left is too weak to do ANYTHING.
No wonder the right is winning.
AG
we will all know. It will be on CNN, and even Fox.
Bullshit.
More inadequate, halfway house bullshit from you, sir.
AG
for my blog. I know it would be one of the very best ones, and I don’t have a single one yet from here.
Just click the link in my sig, scroll down, down down, on the right hand side, and you will see the other testimonials, they are nothing compared to what yours would be, both in pure quality and prestige.
You can post it here, or as a comment on the blog itself!
I’ll bet you would.
But…
No.
Too weak to bother with.
Sorry, D.
Get someone else to satisfy your taste for flagellation.
AG
“inadequate, halfway house bullshit” but I don’t feel like it would be fair to you, you can do so much better.
Maybe once it’s up, you’ll post a revision, just to protect your reputation.
Nope.
Too weak to bother with.
Sorry, D.
I do not want to appear on your website at all.
AG
Immortalized for all to see, forever and all eternity, as the Mormons say, nestled cozily between rabid Moledetnik extraordinaire Jim Sagle from an Islamophobe site, and somebody named hamletta from kos.
😀
I thought that “the left” according to Fox was anyone who wasn’t one hundred percent behind the preznit’s latest Children’s Crusade. I’m a bit less clear as to how CNN defines “the left.”
of the “American left,” CNN’s definition is pretty much the same, though they present it in a slightly less “Entertainment Tonight” style, though that is changing, as they realize they need to keep on the pulse of old Joe Beaujolais, who sometimes finds old AIPAC hand Leslie Blitzer just a smidge too liberal for his tastes, but I was referring to a World Class left. A Caracas the day after the coup attempt left. An original Bastille Day left, there aren’t many lefts like that left, but one always has hope. And if there is anything the US is good at, it’s production. A US left would knock the socks off the world, but unlike the right, leave the feet.
Ya know Ductape,
This idea of being a devotee of a politician is interesting.
As for me I think of politicians the same way I think of lawyers; if they are not defending my/our interests zelously they get fired.
DuctTape is a devotee of…discussion, I am beginning to think.
WHATEVER the position…he can find a fault. Thus the endless circle begins anew.
AG
I hope you will consider taking an interest in it yourself one day.
What I find interesting is that the very people who preach pragmatism and waiting, are the same ones who seem to be most discomfited by suggestions that there is quite a distance between Somalia with money and utopia, so much distance, in fact, that there is no need to worry at all about inadvertantly achieving the latter, even if it were possible, which both theologians and sociologists agree that it is not.
Trying harder to beat one’s wife so that fewer marks are visible is not progress. There are plenty of men who do not beat anybody who are in no danger of being considered perfect men.
You are a closed system, Ducky.
Have fun wid yo’se’f.
I’m through.
AG
We all do what we can in the way that is coherent to us, Arthur.
The most lasting changes come not through swift revolution where the old inequities stay firmly in place and only the cast of characters change, but slowly, and in quite ways. I cannot reform the world in a heartbeat, (and if I could, who’s to say my conception of utopia isn’t seriously flawed) but I can share whatever I have with others everyday, and one transitory moment at a time, make a difference. Will it matter in the long run ? Perhaps, but that’s an added bonus.
When we raise our children with love and respect, modeling kindness, consideration, and fairness, perhaps we infinitesimally bend the arc of the universe toward justice, but even if it did not, are or efforts in vain ?
When we listen with empathy, learn in humility, and engage all our wits to understand, we become not more certain, but more connected.
This will probably sound like weakness to you, but I assure you it is not. It is real grassroots humanist activism, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
Yeah.
We all do our job.
In lockstep, like a creation of zombies.
Clomp clop clomp, once again unto the abyss.
What you just wrote…BET on it, Susan…is what all the good Germans had to say too.
As the Jews were trucked past their houses to the ovens just downwind of them.
GOOD Germans.
NICE Germans.
Where is THEIR gradualism now?
Those “good” people who taught THEIR children “love and respect, modeling kindness, consideration, and fairness” and all the OTHER code words that the middle class use for not taking a stand.
Where is it?
It’s buried with the millions of slaughtered Jews, and its long term effects are still revernberating to this day, right there in the Middle East. Had they stood up to Hitler, those good, upstanding , empathic, so-called “Christians”… no Jewish problem, no Israel.
No Israel.,..no Iraq, no Palestine, no Taliban, no Al Qaeda.
No Third World War.
Taking a STAND is grassroots human activism, and you’d damned well better believe that it’s not for the weak at heart.
The bougeoisie is forever and always weak, and hopeless in its weakness.
And FROM that weakness come the dogs of war.
They are upon us now, whether you know it or not, those dogs. Sheathed in cloaks of digital invisibility they are howling silently around your very door as we speak. And as you whisper your myths of morality and forgiveness to your children, remember…their blood will be upon your hands when the shit goes down.
Remember…had you stood up instead of prevaricated in the name ofmiddle class neutrality, it could have been stopped.
And you blew it.
“Be nice, children. It will all go away. Any day now. Aaaany day…’
BULLSHIT.
It’s been on us since 1963. Without letup. And you continue to turn your eyes away from the truth so’s you can make the payments 0n the mortgage, the SUV and the old retirement fund.
It’s bullshit, Susan.
And it ain’t working.
Not even CLOSE.
AG
You are so off base it would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
I have worked all my life for social justice. I have studied and marched and written letters, organized, taught, and raised funds and awareness. I do not have a mortgage, an SUV or retirement. I live very simply in a rented room and give away everything I can to promote peace and save lives. If I become disabled and can’t work, I’ll kill myself to avoid being a burden, since I have chosen not to “plan for the future”, but to address the most pressing collective needs today. I have risked life and limb for social justice, Arthur, AND done the piecemeal, long term grunt work that you find too boring.
So you just go play the blues, Arthur.
Hey!!!
We’ve made the same choices.
That’s how I live, too.
Totally.
I too was involved with the gradual way.
And I watched in horror as my country veered further and further towards the dark side no matter WHAT I did. What ANY of us good-hearted gradualists did.
For about 30 years.
Until one day I decided “FUCK all this!!! SOMEBODY has to step out of line, here.”
So I did.
And out of line…out of the mainstrteam complete with personal NEWSTRIKE!!! and all the rest…an interesting thing began to happen. Compared to the way I had been growing up until that time, I began to change at almost the speed of light.
An individual understanding and personally experienced example of what only recently scientists are beginning to understand is the REAL basis of evolution.
The quantum leap.
As above, so below.
In physics, a quantum leap or quantum jump is a change of an electron within an atom from one energy state to another. This is a discontinuous change in which the electron goes from one energy level to another without passing through any intermediate levels. This phenomenon contradicted expectations set by classical theories, that the electron’s energy should be able to vary continuously. Quantum leaps of electrons cause the emission of electromagnetic radiation in quantized units called photons. All emission of light occurs as a result of quantum leaps.
Yup.
It happens on the personal level, too.
AND…it happens on the societal level.
Like all sudden evolutionary changes, these kinds of sudden movements are dangerous. (Ever notice that only one letter differentiates the word “evolution” from the word “revolution”? Dig it.)
Sometimes they work…more often they do not.
So it goes.
But…nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The gradualists stay on the safe side of that “x ventured=y gained” equation. But when push comes to shove…when a stronger, more quantum leap-type of force (Fascism, revolution on the Communist level) appears and actually DOES something, the gradualists get dragged along.
Of course…eventually things settle right back down again.
After a good, healthy, cleansing World War or two.
But…can we afford to wait this time?
Or is THIS half-century’s World War going to be the real “war that ends all wars”?
As in KABOOM!!!
So do not dismiss what I have to say out of hand, here, susanw.
I am calling out from the other side of that change.
To you and to all the OTHER “Good Americans”.
We are headed for another quantum leap.
The only question that remains is whether that leap will be forward or backward.
Poise yourself for the jump.
And then…over the cliff you go!!!
In the full faith that you will fall upwards.
VAYA!!!
“I’m flyyyyying!!!“
Try it.
You’ll like it.
Later…
AG
If there seems to be a danger that they might be leaning too far in the direction of representing your interests, they get killed.
No doubt Ductape, no doubt.
Hey all,
This may be the rock or the hill, I don’t know.
Check it out.
Lesser Evilism