Perpetual Notion

So yeah, I have been a loaf on the writing front. I will return. But until then, here is a suggestion of how to spend some internet perusing time:

Perhaps you have trouble forming opinions on matters such as music. Your friends talk smart about the latest album by such and such, but you are at a loss. Check out Peer Validated, see what they have to say about the up & coming as well as ongoing musical acts. Adopt their opinions as your own, at least until you can flex your own muscles of critique.

If for no other reason… check them out to support something good coming out of the Chippewa Valley. And, one of them almost cried during the trailer for Darjeeling Limited.

Even the critical have a sensitive side.

While he walks the bass
I just read a few pages
and born is our groove

The concept not young,
but borrowed from Kerouac
and others less known.

Of journal and jazz,
strum, thumb, pluck, and punch the prose.
Watch as we discuss.

There is more to come
So place your ear on the stage
delight in our notes.

Michael Jackson is a freak. For the spectacle that is his current life, the media lines up in hopes for a ticket to something, some sideshow. And Michael Jackson does not disappoint. Keep your eyes fixed long enough, and the man is bound to perform. He is after all, an entertainer.

The world is full of newsworthy events, and the media has been quite clear that when he is on the move, Michael Jackson is the front page news. Then we the readers/viewers eat what is fed us, and some acquire an appetite for it. Absent of the initiative taken by the press, people would not be requesting constant updates on a fallen pop icon, but here we are.

Before being an icon, Jackson was a kid. But just barely. Raised in a family where the father’s heart was more consumed in managing than paternal obligation, the spiral began.

The black Partridge Family, though actually talented, were known as the Jackson Five. An R&B group headed up by the youngest member, little Michael Jackson. Adorable, excessively talented, and a heck of a showman, Michael was an early center of attention. When kids grow up they play, and they play with other kids. Michael group up hanging out with his older siblings, and his older siblings’ groupies, and music industry people. No time for childhood in a lucrative business.

As it goes with bottling up emotions, childhood also cannot be repressed, only postponed. Having been the fortunate victim of awesome success, Michael Jackson remained quite busy and in the public eye through the later eighties. It was sometime after the bad album had been released and toured that Michael finally had an opportunity to relax and step out of the public focus.

During his retreat to the Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson began his more reclusive life. Now that he could do what he wanted/needed and not what the public dictated, his personality began a regression to that of a child’s. This is understandable as his mind and body were just compensating for something that had been previously ignored. Doing as any self-respecting kid would, Michael made a zoo and amusement park of his home. Lacking the ability to relate to those his age, his best friend was a monkey. During these days of isolation, Michael’s appearance began a path of drastic changes. His skin lightened, but that may have been beyond his control. However, the plastic surgery that was within his control, approached a level of excess. Perhaps he was attempting to match his physical being to his mental state. His reasons are his own.

The merits to the companionship of a monkey are limited. The time came when Michael felt the need to acquire playmates of his own age. His mental age. Unfortunately for Michael Jackson, society dictates that a man crawling into middle age may not inhabit the same space as a child unrelated to him. This is America, the land of prosperity, and if you have not yet earned your fortune, then you can sue somebody that has. An eccentric and increasingly recluse man living in a fairytale land and inviting children over for play dates is a fantastic target for accusations. Both sensational for the media, and lucrative for the lawyers.

Guilty or innocent, Michael Jackson has made himself into a target. He has fallen from grace so much that he has become a victim of the world. His life is no longer his to steer. Had a little bird placed a message in his ear nearly two decades ago, so much could have been avoided, and saved. If only Michael received the message that there are far superior methods of handing over the reigns to one’s life.

As many celebrities have eloquently demonstrated over the years, the best way to gain and maintain the public’s favor is to invest your soul in drugs. Smile at a stranger’s kid and face definite scrutiny. Become a recovering heroin addict and bathe in the flow of public sympathy. And should you die of an overdose, remember… your potential potential will far surpass that of your actual potential. The “could have been” is so much better than the “what kinda was.”

Looking at my compact disk of “Bad,” Michael’s last great album, I see that it was released in 1987. Were Michael to die within about a year of that release, he would have made the best career move possible. He would have created a momentum. The world would continue on, and bring his memory with it. Michael Jackson did not (to my knowledge) touch the drugs. He is accused of touching boys. His life has taken on a spiral that no drug can emulate. He is fixed on the media, and no opportunity of overdose.

Michael Jackson could have been historically perfect. Many have found the path to eternal greatness by reaching their peak and jumping off. Michael Jackson has found his peak, he teetered side to side, and has since had a long tumble down. His tumble continues. What he could have been no longer will be.

The hour is after bar close. But none I know were there tonight. Instead we followed enticement to bonfire and communal painting. The evening goes beyond that. I steal the use of a computer unit as music happens. I am not one to jump on the mess of instruments adding to the room’s decor. instead I take my inspired movement to these keys. And click click click. Ready to leave better of an hour ago. But a roomate was taken to the drums and has since been swayed to hold his stool seat. I am not to deny art. Nor will I soon pass it by. No. I sit click listen hear am ready and there as it goes and comes but I will be here and it continues to happen. The roomie who sees not fit to tap our skins of the ever available home set has found himself quite the comfortable one upon the garbage pail contraption of a beat kit kept here. As much as five but the moment hosts three in count of musician. If or not they are separate song or just pauses of breath and praise between the solitary work of the night’s show. In and out spectators make way. To the fire, to the tunes. We get slow. Take it down two notches. Take it up. Let us be on with the loud. In sax drums piano, three very different things are happening. Three very different things are agreeing in an argument that none but all have the edge. the additional urgency of 1.5 drummers takes presence. A stick, a single one, into the hand of the audience is taken up into the cluster of right now. And it goes heard. Broke. We lull. Slow. Finish. The cellulars climb from pockets to press their faces against thumbs to swallow numbers that will ensure such encores of more and more to come. And the set is reassemled to whatever the pile that it was. And he talks to me. And we go…

With the exception of a couple songs on the Wonder Boys soundtrack, I have been rather weary of any Bob Dylan music since the seventies. I have the man on such a high pedestal that I would hate to put something in my ears that would argue otherwise. I have had his latest, Modern Times, for a little while now. But this moment I am giving it a first real listen. The current track, Working Man’s Blues #2, if for pace alone, will make a person stop working and reflect on whatever needs some reflection. It may even inspire one to write a blog post. He has mellowed out, perhaps most notably in his voice. But if anything, the result is more aesthetically acceptable. Any wanting of the early voice is more likely rooted in nostalgia than in quality. Sixties Dylan, is a genre all his own. A whiny time needed a whiny voice. Now maybe a bling-laden time needs a humbled voice. Bob delivers.