Xark!

Trumpet of the Living Dead

While I have more than a passing knowledge of most of the jazz canon from the 1950s to the 1980s, I never became much of a Chet Baker fan.  While I listened to his work with Gerry Mulligan, there was something about the . . . well . . . the lyricism of much of his playing that didn’t appeal to me.  Indeed, I always had something of an unearned snotty attitude about west coast jazz.  Nonetheless, it was with some excitement that I went to see the “revival” of Let’s Get Lost, the 1988 Bruce Weber documentary.  Evidently, in anticipation of a new print going to DVD for the first time this year, the film is making its rounds at art film houses, and it arrived in Nashville just this week.

My reactions to the film were wildly different than I had expected.  I had read that the film provided a poignant portrait of Baker, counterposing images of Baker as a young James Dean with a trumpet with contemporary (1987) images of an older Baker, ragged from a lifetime overuse of speedballs and alcohol.  While some question the veracity of the film’s narrative (i.e., the film makes it seem as if Baker’s life was in complete decline while, according to some accounts, his career was on something of a late upswing in the mid 80s), the accuracy of the narrative—hell, Baker himself--was the least of my concerns as I sat in the theater shaken by the awful physical transformation one sees between the young and older versions of him.

The Downside of Pleasure

I have recently been relearning a lesson about the complicity of pleasures, as well as the difficulties of resisting it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a strong supporter of public education.  In brief, my stance is that the more all of us are dedicated to our public school systems, the better we will collectively make them.  Rather than thinking about what is “good for us” as individuals, we owe it to each other to make the collective as good and strong as possible.  In this post, I want to bracket the question of whether my position is right or wrong (if you want to debate that question, you can go to the original post where I’ll be more than happy to engage you).  Instead, I want to focus here on the ways in which my reaction to my son’s recent decision to attend an “elite” private school for his university education points to the seductiveness of prevailing common sense, even when we are dedicated to resisting it.

Personal Politics and the Unwritten Future

Julien Temple's documentary, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, about the career/life of Clash and Mescaleros’ frontman Joe Strummer is, to be generous, an engaging collection of sometimes rare video clips and new interviews that offers an adequate introduction to the singer and irritatingly dogmatic politico.  To be more frank, it—like The Filth and The Fury, Temple’s Sex Pistols’ documentary—is something of a cobbled together mess of new and vintage clips that leaves someone like me—a Clash fan from jump--fairly bored.  Not that I can’t find a way to talk about it; I can always do that; it’s more that I wouldn’t want to encourage you to go see it. 

About the documentary itself:  while it is no doubt a nice pleasure to watch documentary clips of the Clash throughout their career (nothing warms a middle aged heart more than mass mediated self-absorption), and while it was both informative and charming to learn (and see) Joe’s early life and upbringing as well as his life post-Clash (about which I knew little), the composition of the story telling was baffling. 

Temple tells Strummer’s story by interposing archive footage of Strummer with interview clips of a variety of unnamed friends sitting around campfires in different global locations. When you know the person being interviewed, and understand their connection to Strummer, this is charming.  When you don’t know the person and/or don’t know their connection, this is distracting and irritating (“Who is that bearded guy?” “Why is Johnny Depp being interviewed?”)

The Brilliant Pass at Large

Over at the Rosewater Chronicles, my friend Joshua Gunn authored an interesting essay that has haunted my thinking over the last week.  While the issue he raises is specific in his account to the academy and areas of academic expertise, it’s a question worthy of all groups of “specialists,” whether they be journalists, health care professionals, waiters, football players . . . hell, it’s worthy of your attention regardless of what you do.

In his post, Gunn questions the ways in which groups of academics often offer what he calls “the brilliant pass” to those who are most successful at their area of expertise.  Without naming names, Gunn points to a number of people in rhetorical and communication studies who are viewed as “brilliant” by others but who also have some decidedly reprehensible moral and ethical characteristics; they can be rude, liars, sexual predators, mean drunks, and so forth.  (Mind you, Gunn is not saying that all brilliant types are also unethical, only that we give a “pass” to the brilliant ones who are).  The problem, then, is that the larger group of admirers are all too willing to forgive misbehavior if we think the person committing it is “brilliant.”  To the degree that we as individuals help provide the brilliant pass, we are also complicit in their behavior. 

Too Easy

Heh.

In other news, Owen Wilson called his recent suicide attempt a "near death experience," and Brittney Spears reportedly called a glass of water she was given during a deposition, "wetty."

Glad to hear everyone's doing okay out there.

Being Number One at Peace

Last Tuesday night, my cousin invited me up to the beautiful Earlham College campus to attend a talk by Arn Chorn-Pond, a human rights leader and musician.  Chorn-Pond, the subject of the documentary The Flute Player, was speaking as part of a lecture series sponsored in part by a lecture series endowed by my cousin in honor of his mother.  I attended out of family obligation, then, but I left with a sense of humility and a need for reflection. 

Chorn-Pond, whom I am embarrassed to admit I did not know of prior to the lecture, is a Cambodian who, as a child, was separated from his family and put in a work camp with hundreds of other children.  After having been forced to take part in a number of killings (including those of family members), Arn was chosen, along with six other children, to learn to play revolutionary songs on the flute.  The Khmer Rouge soldiers brought in an older musician to teach the children; after one week, they determined that the children had learned enough, so they killed the old man and some of the other students.  Arn learned enough to play for the soldiers and, as a result, was one of fifty children to have survived the work camp.

Arn later escaped the soldiers and found his way to a refugee camp.  He was eventually adopted by an American family, and moved to the United States.  As an adult, he became a crusader for world peace and children's rights.   In addition, upon returning to Cambodia, he discovered that 90% of the "traditional" musicians of his generation had been killed, and he began a project to gather and record the remaining musicians.

Look at Me!

Faith Hill still doesn't get it.  Neither does the Tennessean.

As anyone with any interest in country music will remember, at the 2006 Country Music Association Awards, Faith Hill fumbled.  If you didn't see it, youtube did.  Here's the situation:  as the audience waited for the announcement of the winner of the Female Vocalist of the Year Award, cameras focused on all five of the finalists.  When the name "Carrie Underwood" was read, Faith Hill looked at the camera, mouthed the word "What!" and looked as if she were storming away from the camera. 

Over the next several days, while she was being condemned on-line and elsewhere, a number of people rushed to her defense, noting that Faith was clearly joking, that she had a wacky sense of humor in general.  While I initially thought she may have been serious,  I took her at her word that it was joke.  As far as I have seen from my seat in fandom, Faith Hill is a nice enough person with a good number of friends who speak highly of her ethics and behavior.  So, I do indeed trust that she was joking.

iWhiners

As I'm sure many of you have seen, there has been quite a bit of controversy in the iWorld over Apple's recent announcement that they were dropping the iPhone's price. Although it is true that this price cut comes not too long after the iPhone's debut, I'm also having trouble believing that people didn't "expect" a price cut. Yet, to read some of the reactions to the news, you'd think Apple had pulled off the biggest swindle since Springfield bought a Monorail.

After initially taking a hard line against the iWhiners, Apple has since loosened up a bit and offered to try to make things "right." I find myself agreeing with Steve Job's views that, while it is important to be considerate of one's existing customers, the technology game is played fast and being an early adopter of technology should not be for those with weak stomachs, small wallets, and giant tear ducts.

So, while I think that Jobs and Co. devised a brilliant apology package (store credit instead of a rebate) that shows why Apple is still at the top of their game, I believe the early adopter iWhiners should still be ashamed of themselves, and take a moment to think about the impact of their complaining.

All This, And Nothing More

Like the song, the watercooler debate about The Sopranos finale seems to be going on, and on, and on.... And not everyone appears to be happy -- either with the show's ending or the degree of debate itself. While HBO is encouraging active discussion, Wikipedia has suspended general editing on their Soprano's page (wonder why!). Everyone I've talked with seems to have a strong opinion about both the meaning of the fade-to-black ending and an even stronger opinion about whether or not it was a "good" ending. Judging by people's apparent investment in these questions alone, I think one would have to call the show's finale a success. Or not.

The Pleasures of Struggle

In the past several weeks, I have twice been involved in conversations with “church attending” friends. Both of these conversations took the same turn—a turn I’ve become very familiar with and a turn that leaves me feeling slightly irritated.  In both cases, I’ve held my tongue because I wasn’t sure that my irritation was warranted, and I wanted to process the ways in which these conversations may work as an indictment of my behavior. 

So, here’s how the conversation goes:  Somehow, the topic of spirituality or worship or church attendance will arise.  Either before or after I observe that I attend Mass on a regular basis, my partner in conversation says something akin to this: “Oh, I’ve joined a fill-in-the-blank-liberal church because they believe in all the same things that I believe in” (e.g., gay marriage, reproductive choice, female clergy).  It may be because I am Catholic and have beliefs which tend to run counter to standard Catholicim (and I am hence being defensive), but there’s something about this response that bothers me. It’s not that I think people shouldn’t be able to join any church for any reason—hell, of course, they should be able to believe whatever they wish and join or not join any group of their desire—it’s more that I don’t like the fact that the position my friends take assumes that it is morally superior to choose a church based on one’s politics.  Let me restate:  choose or don’t choose your form of worship based on your politics, but don’t act like its an obviously better moral position to make your choice on that basis; don’t make an assumption that would posit my own attendance at Mass as a morally inferior position, because I would argue that my position, while no better, is both spiritually and politically useful.