C.B. Davis, PHD: Talking with Beethoven (and Dr. Ira Progoff)

C.B. Davis, PHD: Talking with Beethoven (and Dr. Ira Progoff)

Jazz Profiling in Georgia

Jazz Profiling in Georgia

When I was a professor at the University of Georgia in Athens, I used to hang out in a Borders that had a decent CD department with a better-than-usual Jazz section. I wondered about the jazz buyer and one day, I ran into him.  After chatting a little about music, I told him I was a jazz musician and where he could hear me play. Then I asked him about sales.

    “Jazz doesn’t sell or we would have more of it.” He said, “When I’m gone you can watch it dwindle to nothing.”

     “I knew there was intelligence behind this stock.” I said, “So, what does sell? Is it that instrumental RnB they call smooth jazz?”

    “It’s worse than that.” he said, then gestured toward the holiday crowd in the store. “It’s busy today, we might actually sell some jazz. You see, look, there’s a rarity. A woman in the jazz section!”

     We both looked at the 30-something, casually-dressed woman in the first aisle of jazz. She seemed to be pensively looking for something.  I was about to walk over and observe her more closely, but the jazz buyer held me back.

     “I’ll bet I can guess what she’s looking for.” said the buyer.

       “Huh? Do you know that customer?”

    “Nope. Never even seen her in here. But she’s going to buy either Harry Connick Junior or Diana Krall. How much do you want to bet that I’m wrong?”said the buyer.

     “No thanks, I don’t gamble. But you should have to pick only one, so which is it?”

     “You try. What do you think she will buy?”asked the buyer.

     “Well, your guesses are good, but maybe Norah Jones. Is she in the jazz section?.” I asked.

     “No” he said, “she’s too popular. No one could find her if she were here.”

     I laughed and he gestured.

     “Look.” said the buyer with a smile. I turned and saw the woman turn the corner at the end of the aisle. I could clearly see that she was holding a CD by the New Orleans crooner, Harry Connick Junior. The buyer then noticed another customer in the jazz section.

      “OK, check this out. Perfect. A professional in his 50s …. he might be more of a challenge,” said the jazz buyer, who had inhaled a sandwich.

   I looked at the older guy in the suit, thumbing through CDs.  “You young people don’t gauge the age of your elders very well. I’d say he was in his 60s.”

    “Good, then it should be easy for you. Don’t deliberate too much. Take a quick guess.”

     “Ok, just instinctively I would guess Brubeck. “

    “You are correct,” said the jazz buyer guy, now devouring an apple. I turned to look at the man in the jazz section. He had yet to make his choice.

     “What do you mean I’m correct? He hasn’t made his choice yet!”

     “I said,” he said, “that I could tell you what everyone would pick, and you are correct. That’s what he’s going to pick. You see him there at the B’s?

     “Well no actually, that I can’t see, but go on.”

     “Well he’s looking at that CD trying to remember whether he has it or not.” I asked. “Why don’t you help him? “

     The jazz buyer said, “If I asked him the logical, pertinent questions, I might sound patronizing.”

   “What do you mean?”

     “Are you looking for “Take Five? Do you have “Time Further Out?”

     “Oh, I see.” I said.

The buyer squinted and asked, “How did you know he would pick Brubeck?”

     “Well, the Quartet was very popular around the time that guy was in college.” I said, thinking that I knew my own reasoning.

     “Why not the Modern Jazz Quartet? They were also popular with college kids in the 50s, as was Dizzy Gillespie.”

     “Oh, I see what you’re getting at. He might have been a hipster back then.”

     The jazz buyer, who was in his late twenties, just looked at me as if I had just spoken in a foreign language.

     “Oh,” I said, “hipster means something else now.”

     “No. Well yes, but no.” said the buyer. “Your instinct told you something I have observed to be almost invariably true.”

     “Oh! You mean how white people buy jazz by white artists. Isn’t that an unfair generalization?”

      “No” he said. “Not here anyway. Where are you from?”

      “Northern California.”

     “Things might be different there, but probably not. You buy black artists because you are an aficionado….an actual jazz musician.”

    The buyer paused as he watched a young man approach the older one who was looking at Brubeck CDs.

     “This is a lot of jazz traffic even at Christmas rush. He must be the old guy’s grandson or something. “

     “I don’t think so,” I said, “See. The old man doesn’t know who the kid is.” I continued with my analysis. “This kid is a band geek. He’s going to want something like Maynard Fergusson or Stan Kenton. No, he’s too young for those …maybe Wynton Marsalis or Joshua Redman?”

     “I see how you snuck two black artists in there. But no. He’s a hipster band geek.  He’s going to like some dreamy boring thing that doesn’t swing. “

      “Hipster band geek might be into Dave Douglas?  He can be dreamy and not swing.”

      “Whoever it is, it will be a white artist.” Said the buyer.

     “Why couldn’t it be that they just that they like those particular musicians?” I suggested.

     The buyer shook his head. “No. It’s uncannily invariable.”

      “Ok. What about black customers? “I asked.

     The jazz buyer shrugged and said, “We don’t get many. They are much less predictable though. Look, there’s a black lady in the classical section now.”

     Another white man, between the ages of the previous two was now walking into the jazz section. He was a clean but ungroomed middle-aged hippie.

     “What about this guy,” I said, “He looks like a classic rock person to me, so in jazz he likes probably something funky or good old-fashioned fusion. Maybe smooth jazz. But he might buy black artists, don’t you think?”

     The jazz buyer sipped on his drink and said, “Nope.  But I will admit he is a more difficult subject. would be thinking guitarists.”

     “Is he a Pat Metheny or a John McLaughlin?” I said. “No…wait…is Jeff Beck in the jazz section?”

     “Yes, but only because I put him there.” Said the buyer. “Look, he’s in the F’s.”

      We both searched our brains for guitarists whose surnames began with an “F”. We can rule out Tal Farlow, if you even have any,”

     “Nope.” Said the buyer.

     “Hay no Feliciano…. Robben Ford? Fripp? Frith? I know…. Bill Frissell.”

     Was I correct? No. But he did pick up the latest by Bela Fleck, the sole jazz banjoist on earth, also a white guy.

     “I find this whole demonstration disturbing.” I said. “At least you sold some jazz.”

     The buyer sighed and said “Jazz doesn’t sell well because white people only buy white jazz artists, and black artists are dominant in jazz. The black jazz artists outnumber the white 20 to 1. The white customers outnumber the black by about the same ratio.”

     From then on, every time I went into that Borders I would play the “guess what people will buy” game, mostly in the jazz section.  I confirmed the buyer’s observations that any white person who ventured into the jazz section seemed only to buy the work of white artists. None of these people think of themselves as racists. They like jazz and these just happen to be their favorite artists, every one of them white.

     I probably could not tell a white musician from a black one in a blindfold test unless I recognized a known player, which I probably would. I can tell Lester Young from the white players who followed his style like Getz, Zoot, Desmond etc. but not because those guys sound “white.”  But I do have an idea of what “sounding white” means.  I discovered this while talking to some summer session students the morning after Ray Charles died.

     “Do you know what popular music would sound like if it weren’t for Ray Charles?” The students stared blankly at me as if I wanted an answer. Not only was this a Script Analysis class, but it was early for Drama majors.

      “It would sound…. white.” I said, and wondered almost immediately if that was appropriate.

     One of the students asked, “What do you mean? What does white sound like?”

     I shook my head and said, “I’m sorry. That just came out. It’s not a responsible thing for a historian to say. But as a jazz musician, between jazz musicians, it’s something unspoken but generally understood. “

     This was followed by silence until I said, “Ok, let’s make this simple. Most country music sounds white, but not all of it. It’s 2 beat like polka. Any style can sound white, though. You must have heard the Beach Boys, right? They were from my time but have stood the test because of their creativity and unique sound. But you would not mistake them for a black group, would you?”

     More silence. The oldest student then asked, sarcastically, “What about the Carpenters? They sound white, and they happened way after Ray Charles.”

      “Well, we evolved from apes and there are still apes.” I said, and immediately wondered if that was going to get a prickly reaction. Somehow, I made a teaching moment out of it and talked about cultural evolution being more mercurial than biological evolution.

     Later that day I was standing in line for coffee. I looked down at the newspaper headlines. Ray Charles caught barely a moment’s coverage when he died right in the middle of the weeklong blanket media overkill of Ronald Reagan’s death and funeral. I flipped over the paper and saw a small lead to Brother Ray’s Obituary. An old white woman was just ahead of me in line. I asked her pardon when I realized she had also been looking at the paper.

   “I was looking for something about Ray Charles dying.” I explained.

     The old woman smiled and made eye contact. “He was great, wasn’t he?” she said.“I’d march down the street for Ray Charles before I would for Ronald Reagan.”

     Every so often, even in Georgia, people will surprise you.

Interrupting for Truth: A lesson from Cervantes

Reading the Quixote gives you a lot to think about. Every single story told by any of the many verbose characters in Don Quixote is at some point, and sometimes more than once, interrupted. Only then do we find out the truth, Cervantes tells us! Of course every interruption in the Quixote makes you laugh, too. Cardenio tells Quixote not to interrupt him under any circumstances or he won't finish his story. This in itself is almost as funny as the inevitable interruption, which drives Cardenio into a fit and yes, reveals the truth of his madness.
It occurs to me lately that the truth does not emerge without dialogue. Monologues and stories need to be interrupted, which is also to say "interpreted." Think about a lawyer or therapist who asks, "What was that you said about money and your mother? Can we get back to that?" Boom. Truth bombs drop.
That's why we need Drama that has substance and not just sensory immersion, so there can be smart dialogue for us to overhear. The Athenians invented democracy and theatre at the same time. Cervantes invented the novel around the time that people were starting to doubt what they had always believed. Time for interrupted stories, or in other words, dialogue. Without it, the stories take control. Socrates warned us that the stories in the theatre might be too influential, but we only know that because Plato wrote it in his Dialogues.
We need to listen. Cervantes tells us to listen to a lot of different people's stories, especially the ones who don't have a voice in their culture. But we should also interrupt and ask questions. Everyone else's story is a tangent to our own, but also another angle to see ourselves from. Interaction is required for common ground to exist.
As Cervantes tells us, sometimes the search for justice and truth means getting beat up and thrown into the road. But Quixote and Sancho have great dialogue when waking from unconsciousness in pain. It's better than Pozzo and Lucky in Godot. Sancho interrupts Quixote's story to ask, "Exuse me sir knight, but when do you think we will begin to feel our legs again?"
When you interrupt a racist, you may be asking the same question shortly thereafter. But interrupting is necessary for dialogue to occur. As soon as someone says something racist, call them on it. They think political correctness is a thing of the past? They won't know what hit them because it won't be violent conflict, just dialogue. But watch out for the backside of windmills.

Awkward Brush with Greatness: Meeting Dizzy Gillespie in London, circa 1981

     It happened at Ronnie Scott’s, the big-name jazz club in London.  I was in my early twenties, on my first and only London and Ireland adventure. It was a sort of honeymoon because my girlfriend Robyn and I had to pretend to be married to sleep together in religiously conservative Ireland. 

We didn’t have a large trip budget, but we felt so lucky that Dizzy and Betty Carter were playing while we were in London, that we decided to splurge and go! I had seen Dizzy live several times, but never Betty Carter, my favorite and the woman who Carmen McCrae called “the only REAL jazz singer.”

      Ronnie Scott’s was very large and posh in comparison to the name jazz clubs in the States. The place was only about half full that night.  I found it strange and disappointing that there were so few people there to see two of the greatest living jazz artists. The more Guinness I drank, the more this upset me. After the third pint, I waited until Dizzy’s band took a break and ran down the red-carpeted stairs to the restrooms.

     It seemed a small men’s room for such a large club. There was only one man besides me at the short line of urinals. I joined him, but I directed my gaze toward the urinal cake. Even in my youth, three pints was a lot for me and I knew I would be there for a while. As the urinator to my left finished and walked away behind me, I heard him say something to another man just coming through the restroom door. When the new guy pulled up next to me, I rather suddenly realized that I was pissing next to Dizzy Gillespie: one of my heroes, a virtuoso trumpet improviser, a founding father of Modern Jazz and founding uncle of Latin Jazz, Charlie Parker’s other half, composer of Con Alma, Salt Peanuts, Night in Tunisia, Groovin’ High, Manteca, Tin Tin Deo, Woody’n You etc. etc.  

     Luckily I didn’t turn and inadvertently piss on him. But I did something just as stupid. I was drunk, remember, and not an experienced drinker. After we both finished and zipped, I felt somehow obliged to apologize for the small audience turnout upstairs. But what I said was, “Too bad it couldn’t have been a better night for you.” Oh, my God, almost as soon as I said that I knew it didn’t come out right. I stammered, “I mean, too bad there weren’t enough people here.” That was bad too, but not worse, as if any number of people would be enough.

    Dizzy shrugged it off, and looked right at me, as if to say with a nod, “I get it. Don’t be so nervous.” Then the maestro proceeded to wash his hands. I thought, “Here is my moment to recover.” So, while he was washing his hands I leaned next to the sink and said something about how I had learned all his tunes. “Even Con Alma?” said Dizzy as he dried his hands.

“Yeah that’s a tough one.” I said, excited that he had spoken to me. I could see he was about to leave the restroom, so I instinctively put out my hand to shake his. He pulled his hand back and said quickly, “You haven’t washed your hands yet.”

     Ok, THAT is what I did that was stupid, not just misspeaking such that my unsolicited and unnecessary apology came out as an insult.  Now I was guilty of a hygiene crime!

   Again Mr. Gillespie shrugged it off. Instead of just leaving quickly he waited until I had washed my hands so we could shake. While I was wiping them dry, Dizzy said:

     “You know in France they wash their hands before they go. Because then it’s clean!”

     This made me laugh and we shook hands. He even whistled softly at Robyn as she came down the stairs, probably wondering what had happened to me. I couldn't wait to tell her. Meeting Dizzy Gillespie makes up for any possible embarrassment my youth and alcohol level could cause.

   

Cervantes' Muslims

      I was surprised at how the Muslim characters in Don Quixote were handled. Even in the "story within a story" of the long-suffering, Spanish, captive-in Barbary sea captain, no Turkish or Arab character is a caricature.
      In Part 2, Cervantes challenges the crude logic of Western xenophobia. Quixote and Sancho meet up with a band of German pilgrims, one of whom turns out to be Sancho's former friend and neighbor Ricote the Morisco. (The Moriscos were those Muslims left living in Spain after the Christian victory; they were forcibly expelled—on pain of death—by royal decree from 1609 to 1613.) Ricote, a humble shopkeeper, has disguised himself as a pilgrim in order to retrieve a small "treasure" he had to leave behind when he and his family were forced to flee. His wife and daughters are in Algiers; he hopes to settle them in Germany, far from the "terror and fear" they have endured in Spain. His story is a poignant one, the refugee's timeless lament, and Sancho listens sadly, sharing a wineskin with his old friend, until they "go their separate ways." Cervantes never belabors the point, or descends into sentimentality, but offers a moving affirmation of ordinary human ties flourishing in spite of fanaticism.
    I know, who has time for timelessness anymore? 

Clarity on Memetics #4 The Copying Experiments

Today I am going to describe an experiment I did periodically with some of my college classes over the years. I did it enough times that I think I got a good sample, at least for my purposes. At any rate, I saw a lot of variation in how the students did the exercises.

     First, I drew a made-up symbol on a card, something scribbly, but not so complex that it couldn’t be remembered at all. I showed one student the card with this mark on it for three seconds, then I asked him to try to copy it from memory.  I then took the card the first student had drawn on to another and repeated the instructions.  When the symbol had been sufficiently mutated but was still recognizable I put the cards on the chalk ledge of the blackboard, but not in order. I asked someone not involved yet to try and place them in the order in which they were done.  Most of the time, the students were quickly accurate in their ordering of the series.

      The next part of the exercise is meant to make them realize something in connection with the first part. I drew a casual pentagram on the board and asked everyone to copy “Exactly what they saw” before I erased it. When they had all "copied" my star, I took several of the cards from a random selection of students and displayed them.  Everyone’s star was different, but they were all recognizable as stars. No one had tried to draw my star exactly, but instead they all relied on their previously installed memes for “how to make a pentagram.”  Except for one, who relied on her previously installed meme for drawing a Star of David. Very carefully, I asked the woman who drew it if she had thought consciously about drawing a six pointed star, or if she had even noticed that my star was five-pointed. She thought for a minute and said, “I just drew a star after I saw you had drawn one, just like everyone else. Mine just came out the way I always draw them.”

     This was the only time that happened, but of course this was not the only time that a Jewish student participated in the exercise.  Significant to the evaluation of this variation was the age of the woman, who was in her early fifties, in contrast with most of the undergraduates who were twenty-somethings. I think we could say that she had a different meme for “drawing a star” than anyone else in class. This inspired me to look closer at all the ways the kids “wrote” their pentagrams.  Another time I asked several students to go to the board and make a star without thinking about it. We watched for similarities and differences in the way they did it. Everyone started at the top and drew the first line down to the left, even the left-handers.  The stars all looked a bit different, but in the way that everyone’s cursive letters look a little different.  The “instructions for making a star” meme had become an unconscious motion for them, in the same way that we don’t have to think of each word as we speak, even though we had to “learn” each word at some point in the past.

     There are several points demonstrated in this exercise. Our ingrained cultural habits become unconscious and influence the way we see and remember. Shapes that we learned through “instructions” are more stable, and the resulting uniformity makes them easier to copy. Left-handers learn to do some things the right-handed way. The order in which slight variations appear between “generations” of copying can be reconstructed.

     Now, students, you tell me: What does all this have to do with the study of history and cultural change?

Clarity on Memetics #3

How could Memetics or Cultural Selection Theory be applicable to the study of history and society? Doesn't it just state the obvious fact that some ideas survive while others don't?

No.

Functionalistic explanations in social theory have often been unconvincing for lack of a detailed etiological (causation) theory. In traditional analyses of the class struggle, for example, it has often been claimed that this or that institution exists "because it serves the interests of the ruling class". The traditional analysis often fails, however, when it tries to find the architect behind the strategy of the ruling class. A close scrutiny may often reveal that such a strategy may be more refined and artful than the members of the ruling class can possibly have been able to think out and agree upon. In particular, this may be the case when we are talking about religious, ideological, or other cultural means. Such strategies of power cannot possibly be explained by rational planning alone, but only by taking into account the accumulated effect of repeated selecting events.

I think that Memetics (cultural selection theory) has its greatest force in the area of irrational behavior.  All societies are full of seemingly irrational and unproductive activities, such as religion, rituals, myths, tales, dance, music, festivity, art, fashion, play, sport, hobby, sex, and romance. All these activities have changed immensely during history, and we are seldom able to tell why. This is really a challenge for cultural selection theory, but how else can we explain Donald Trump or Hitler?

Rational decisions may also have interesting selection effects. Egoistic decisions taken by influential persons or groups may have unwanted consequences for other groups or for the society as a whole. This leads us to conflict research, where selection theory also may be useful. If we can uncover the factors that determine the outcome of a conflict, then we may in principle be able to predict the macro level combined effect of a thousand micro level conflicts.

Right Wing vs. Left Wing Grammar

 Researchers at the University of Kent believe that right-wingers and left-wingers tend to construct sentences in different ways - and that conservatives have a greater predilection for using nouns (labelling) over adjectives (recognizing traits and qualities). This is profound and fits in with George Lakoff's research. 
     This new study drew on research carried out in Poland, Lebanon, and the USA, looking at the language used in political speeches.
They found that conservatives tend to refer to things by their names, rather than in terms of their features - saying someone is "an optimist" rather than "optimistic" or saying "Steve is a homosexual" rather than "Steve is homosexual." Think about that. I would also bet that conservatives use the verb "to be" more than left wingers. Trying to find the original studies has been difficult so far. It is hard to do good research when you aren't connected to an institution with a real library and it's online services.

Clarity on Memetics #2

If it is not about "survival of the fittest" eugenics or developmental-stage theories of historical progress, what the hell is a Darwinian theory of social and cultural change?

There are three broad forms:
1.       Gene-based biological (sociobiology, evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology)
2.       Social learning and imitation, meme-based sociocultural
3.       Dual inheritance or gene-culture coevolution

After a brief definition of each, the next question would be, what are the major differences between these theories and are they commensurate or in conflict?

Clarity on Memetics #1

Why do we humans inherit and pass along ideas and other memes that are not actually good for us or the society we live in? 

To appreciate the way in which socially replicable phenomena (besides market inequities) need not be functioning only for the sake of the humans who reproduce them, one need only consider such things as dogma, clichés, superstitions, scientific and artistic ruts, bureaucratic formalities, feuds, and war. At times we all reproduce these things despite our best interests. There is a real pressure to do so in order to maximize the local fitness or effectiveness of our own social interactions: we are more or less bound to pursue our most immediate ends by immediately available means.

My encounters with Wavy Gravy, Counter-Culture Clown and Psychedelic Relic.

For any counter-culture relics out there, I can quickly contextualize my experience at Desiderata Community School by pointing out that Wavy Gravy was our first commencement speaker.  If you are an old hippie like me, you will remember him as the guy in the Woodstock movie who was helping people on bad acid trips to get grounded in some good karma. His was the voice announcing over the loud speaker, "Don't take the Brown Acid. The Brown Acid is bad acid."

Hugh Romney, alias Wavy Gravy, was a friend of the school. He came to Sacramento from the Hog Farm commune in Berkeley to give a commencement address at our first big graduation ceremony. Yes, he brought green plastic garbage cans, and one of them contained freshly made electric Kool-Aid. Yes, I said electric, but Wavy never said it. Everyone thought it had LSD in it, but the trips people had might have been a party-wide placebo effect, since everyone knew that Wavy had provided the LSD-laced Kool-Aid for the infamous Acid Tests of the Merry Pranksters. Another green plastic garbage pail contained small toys, make-up, wigs, hats, noisemakers, bubble juice and bubble wands. Soon the air was filled with large shining globes of soapy surface tension, refracting light, making brief rainbows that floated on the spring breeze and popped into other dimensions. In other words, the atmosphere was very conducive to psychosomatic psychedelic visuals.

    The graduation ceremony took place at the home of the richest kid who had ever attended Desiderata. He dressed like a cowboy and hadn’t been a student there long, so I was not expecting his parents to be quite so wealthy. Since our tuition was on a sliding scale according to income, this family was a major contributor to the cause. At first, the group of about 25 hippies who descended on the mansion’s back yard felt restrained in such an upscale environment. Enter Wavy Gravy in his clown persona with the big green plastic garbage cans. I am really not sure if the older, more conservative adults from the student host’s family knew what was in the Kool-Aid, but I saw the well-dressed matriarch drinking some. About two hours later, after the ceremony, this same woman was getting her face painted and carrying a bubble wand.

Wavy’s speech included a song we all sang together to the accompaniment of his one-stringed “moon-lute.” He wrote it of course, but said it was an old hippie folk tune called “Basic Human Needs” …something about doing deeds to meet basic human needs from down in the garden of your heart.

     Wavy was not like any clown I had ever met. He was clever with words; for example, his “Nobody for President!” campaign, which was an easy formula: "Nobody can balance the budget! Nobody can end the war!” He liked sleight of hand and used it together with visual puns and sight gags with props.

He stayed with the school for a few days after graduation and I had the chance to I tell him I was interested in clowns, especially historical ones, like Grock and Grimaldi and the Commedia dell’ Arte.

            He asked me with some disbelief, “How do you know about Grock?”

            “I read about him in a book on clowns at the library. Not enough pictures.”

 Remember: There was no Internet in the 70s. If you wanted to do research there was the card catalog at the library…. and that was it. After discussing Grock and his musical clowning, Wavy loaned me his copy of a book called “The Fool and His Scepter” by William Willeford. It was by today’s academic standards an old-fashioned history and Jungian analysis of the Fool archetype. I am not sure when the “Killer Clown” motif appeared in popular culture, but this was before images of the circus "joey" or "Auguste" clown had been used in horror films as a symbol of unexpected evil, evolving by repetition into the clown as an expected evil, a subject of phobias and nightmares. In the 1970s I was lucky to be able to see a parade of great performing clowns like Geoff Hoyle, Mary Winegarden, Melinda Marsh, Larry Pisoni, Bill Irwin, Peggy Snider, Cecil MacKinnon, Gypsy Snider, and others, all passing through the west coast’s Pickle Family Circus. Nobody was making jokes about wasting mimes yet. Clowns and mimes had a more numinous, archetypal quality in the late 60s/early 70s, and the book Wavy loaned me was evidence of it.

A few months later, I visited Wavy, who was in the hospital. I tried to return his book. He said, “Keep it.”  I thought it might be because he was dying. He has cheated death several times since then and is still going. 

Many years later I noticed that Wavy was doing a “book signing” at the Broadway Tower Books in Sacramento. His book was about his free circus camps for kids. The program taught basic clowning and tumbling skills to disadvantaged inner-city boys and girls. I wanted to return his long lost clown book to him, hoping that that would jog his memory of me. I pulled out the book and said,

“I think this is yours.”

“You’re the kid who has my Fool and His Scepter!”

“I tried to return it to you when you were sick, but you said to keep it.”

“That’s probably because I thought I was going to die before I could read it again. But hey, I didn’t. I didn't die the last few times I almost died, either."

“Glad to hear that. I bought a copy of your book for you to sign.”

Wavy pulled out  his new book and said, “No, YOU sign MY book. This is my book signing.”

I laughed. This was Clown logic. Mullah Naz Rudin logic. Wise Men of Chelm logic. Marx Brothers logic. I felt this was an opening to tell Wavy something rather sentimental and fragile. I tried to get it out as economically as possible.

“I need to tell you something Wavy. My earliest memory of the circus is coming out of the show into the lobby area when I was less than 5. Kids were crowding around clowns who were stationed at each exit. I wanted to see a clown up close too, and said, “Why don’t I get to see a clown?” or something to that effect. What I remember my parents saying to me makes no sense, and they have no memory of giving me this apparently original bit of mythology. 

In my four-year-old mind, my parents told me, "There is a clown for every kid in the world, but your clown isn't here. You may not ever meet him, but he’s your clown."

 They were probably telling me something like “There aren’t enough clowns here to go around. All the clowns aren’t here." So, as a four-year-old I figured my clown was just somewhere else. But because of you, I got to meet mine after all.” 

As I said this I felt embarrassed. Not only was this a sentimental story, but I wasn’t sure whether it made me look imaginative or obsessive.

Wavy didn’t even acknowledge what I said. He thanked me for returning his copy of the Fool and His Scepter.  Disappointed, I turned to go. I had only taken a few steps when Wavy called out as if he were a carnival barker trying to drum up business.

“As I said to the mirror this morning, it’s all done with people!”  I turned back when he said this, just in time to see him pull up on his hat. His wig, “bald pate” and clown nose came with it, revealing his Hugh Romney face. He then lowered this “mask,” resuming his Waviness and Graviness and winked at me. I knew that it meant he knew what I meant. He just couldn’t be obvious about it. It had to be funny and off-the-wall, but it grew from deep in the garden of the heart.

Not So Secret Ballots: My Day as a Poll Inspector

I had no idea how much was involved in running a polling place when I volunteered to do it.  I have been unemployed for a long time and I was looking for any sort of work to do, whether it pays a token amount or nothing. The job of Poll Inspector paid a token amount that was close to nothing. When I saw my title, I thought I would be observing, just making sure everything went by the book. I didn’t realize yet that the Inspector not only has to know-it-all but be able to DO everything in the book, or that it was a jam-packed book!

My list of duties came in the actual paper-mail. After reading it, I started worrying. I am not the most organized person, even among hippie-artist types and absent-minded professors. In fact, I left my interior lights on in the car the night before election day and was saved by an alert neighbor. To strengthen my self-confidence, I thought about all the plays I had directed in my youth: all the last minute details and sudden unwarranted trust placed in those delegated to help. This couldn’t be harder than that. But it was. It was like doing an all-day play in a new space with no rehearsal and a cast you just met.

You have an hour to set up before opening the polls at 7 am.  I wanted to set up booths and a kiosk the day before, but there was an event in the space that night, so I couldn’t even move tables around. I had been keeping the entire polling place “set” in our guest room, and I loaded it back into the car at about 5 am on Tuesday morning. My wife helped me with the heavy Precinct Ballot Recorder.  I had yet to meet and had barely spoken to my crew on the phone.

No one was there when I arrived. They all drove into the small parking lot about 5 to six, including the man who was letting us into the facility. My Clerk crew consisted of: two precocious and hard-working 17-year old students, male and female; an alert and capable woman who looked too young to be a grandmother and spoke some Spanish; a round, calm bilingual woman with thick, shiny black hair and amazing multi-tasking abilities, and an older Asian woman who laughed at herself when she forgot something, but was ultimately reliable and unflappable.  I was very lucky that two of them had previously been Poll Clerks. They wondered why they gave me the job of Inspector since I had never been a clerk first, but they were nothing but helpful except for some good-natured teasing. They corrected me gently and let me delegate without question. They were a great crew.

The only real emergency was the malfunction of the Precinct Ballot Recorder’s printer. We already had to keep tallies and checklists on every single thing we did, so another would break our backs. I called a couple of emergency numbers on my election-dedicated cell phone before anyone answered. I could hear shouting in the background.

“How can I…. No! Just hold on…. Sorry, how can help you?”

“Our PBR printer has stopped printing and we get an error message on the screen…”

“Try tightening up the paper roll.”

“I tried that and it didn’t work. “

“Well, let me hand you off to someone who had more experience” he said, and I could relate.

The next voice on the phone said “Pull the printer out of the PBR, it’s only held in with Velcro.”

I reached down and felt for the bottom of the rectangular metal printer. I pulled hard on what felt like the edge of Velcro and the whole thing came out, heavy enough not to fly out of my hands from momentum and still attached by a cord to the rest of the Ballot Recorder. Everyone in the room looked over at me, especially my crew. I said quickly, “Don’t worry. It was just loud Velcro!”

 Back on the phone I said, “Ok, it’s out. Now what? “

“The switch is on the bottom. Turn it on and off again.”

“Ok.” I said, shrugging and flipping the switch. Suddenly the printer made a noise, the error message on the screen disappeared and voting was not interrupted. Even when we had a couple of different “problem voters," the voting never stopped.

    The first person who caused a problem approached the Roster Clerk waving a Vote-by-Mail envelope and reeling off a speech she had on “repeat” about how she didn’t ask for a Vote by Mail ballot.  Her problem as she saw it was that she had changed to Republican to vote in the Primary and that she had a REASON for doing so.  Because she wouldn’t stop talking, it was hard to explain anything to her. We suggested she vote provisionally, which was done by about 10% of the voters by the end of the day. Provisional voting means that even if you walked in off the street at the wrong polling place, you can still vote.  For her, it was a matter of some unknown principal that she not be forced to Vote Provisionally.

     “It counts the same as any other vote, and you get to vote for who you want either way,” I tried to explain.

     “No. I could understand if I had asked for a Vote by Mail envelope, but I didn’t.” she said, for maybe the fifth time since coming in the door. Then she went off her script and grumbled, “It’s a conspiracy against Republicans. It’s because they want to see “Ds” only. They sent me this ballot so I couldn’t vote Republican. But I changed for a reason.”

     Trying to keep from either getting angry or laughing I said, “No, I don’t think that’s the problem. “

     Finally, one of the more experienced poll workers on my crew came to my rescue. “Just let her vote with a crossover ballot and surrender the vote by mail ballot.” she said softly, from behind the irate woman. I held my hand out to receive her unused, and decidedly unwanted mail ballot, but she held onto it and stepped back. I threw my hands up and she tossed it on my table and went off smiling smugly. “Surrender” was the official term, but perhaps not the right choice of word when speaking to someone so certain their rights were being infringed upon by rabid liberals. When she left the ballot booth she kept up the smile, directed at me for some reason.  I guess she assumed I was a liberal despite my short hair, long pants, hard shoes and Captain America’s shield on my shirt.

     The second problem voter came in with a slower, more swaggering kind of defiance. She was wearing a high school athletic team workout-ensemble, sneakers and a baseball hat. She approached the Roster clerk and said her name and party before Sophia could ask her.

     “Sign here.” said Sophia, the high school senior.

     “Why do I have to sign?” asked the voter, squinting at the poor kid.

    Sophia looked back at me with a worried expression.  While smart and very competent she was only 17.   I chimed in, “Uh....so we can mark you off as having voted.”

     The woman in the gym-suit relaxed. “Ok, just asking. Got a right to ask, you know.”

     I am not making up any of this. I need to tell you that because you may not believe what happened next. The smiling Republican woman swaggered to the Precinct Ballot Reader and inserted it into the machine. The machine immediately spat it back out.

     “What the hell?” she exclaimed, her jaw dropping and her eyes getting wide.

     Roberto, the other 17-year-old poll worker said, “The machine printed an error message that you over-voted.”

     “What the hell does that mean?” she asked.

     “You voted twice in the same contest. The state senate candidates were on two separate pages, that’s usually where people over-vote.”

 “But not for President.” She said grabbing the ballot back. “As long as my vote for President gets counted…I still don’t think I messed up. Show me, where is the extra vote?”

     We were trained by the County Registrar’s office to answer any and all questions. Roberto opened and reached into the compartment on the Precinct Ballot Recorder and took out a previously over-voted ballot he had just put in there 15 minutes before.  After voting, the ballots show just a series of dots where the candidate’s vote holes were in the plastic guide pages. Without a key there is no way to tell which dot means what. Except that Roberto had circled where the over-voting on the Senate race occurred.

     “Here is another one that over-voted on the senate contest, see, it’s the same dots as yours.”

   As Roberto placed the voided ballot into the box on the machine and closed the lid, the woman squinted at it with suspicion. I suppose she thought it might be a secret compartment into which Republican votes disappeared forever. She thought better of saying anything aloud, but I saw her look and frown and tilt her head when the box disappeared into the machine.

      “You can override that vote and the rest will still count or you can vote again.” said Roberto, who waited for an answer.

   “That’s ok, then, override it. I came to vote for President.” Said the woman who wanted it known that she voted for Trump without saying it, just like the woman with the unwanted Vote by Mail Ballot.

     About a dozen registered Republicans cross-voted Democrat, each one ostensibly a vote for Bernie or Hilary. But there were also some who went the other way, usually from Libertarian to Republican. One of the men who did this said “My candidate has already won the nomination.”  Another man switching to Republican just came right out and said, “I came to vote for Trump.” I swallowed my concern and said, “You will need a Republican ballot.” Neither of these men looked like they would benefit from a Trump Presidency. 

     I think the poll workers probably WERE all Democrats, even the kids, who had a year to wait before they could vote. I am sure that as usual I was the farthest left of anyone in the room. Not one of us ever said anything about any candidate or issue during the entire 14-hour stretch, and neither did almost all of the voters. I suppose I could have invalidated the vote of the guy who said “I came to vote for Trump,” because he had arguably committed electioneering within 100 feet of the polls, but he was intimidating so I let it go.

           At 5 till 8, I stepped a few paces out the door and yelled, “The polls are closed!” Even before I had actually closed the doors, the Clerks all hurriedly began closing procedures according to the guidelines and checklists and tallies and report sheets. It was around this time that the sole of my left shoe came loose and began to flap. I wore one shoe until someone noticed, which took longer than you would think. I put it back on and made a flapping sound with every other footstep for the rest of the night. I felt like a lame clown as I assigned the crew to the final checks on everything. The two teenagers were panicking a little for the first time. They thought their numbers didn’t match between the Roster and the Voter Tally and the Ballot Count. Just as I began to be concerned, they figured it out and we were done. The closing and packing up took a little less than an hour.

    We loaded up my car with every last remnant of the polls, including the sealed White Box containing voided ballots and all election trash, including tiny bits of paper with nothing on them. After thanks and goodbyes, all but one of the crew got in their cars and drove away. It felt strange to say goodbye to them so quickly, thinking of what we had accomplished together and that we might not ever see each other again. At least that’s how it felt to me. Marisol, the multi-tasker stayed behind and rode with me to deliver the votes. As we pulled up in front of the City Center complex, a sort of “pit crew” suddenly appeared. The group of six or seven people began unloading as soon as I released the lock on the hatchback. After signing something no one had time to read, I took Marisol back to her car and we wished each other well. 

     Driving toward home I could hardly believe that the job was over and had been completely successful. I thought about how six strangers had made it possible for about five hundred people to participate in what passes now for democracy. Even an irresponsible vote for an irresponsible candidate is cast by an active citizen, taking some small amount of responsibility for the future.

Quick Lesson in History Lessons

     Back in the 1980s I read a book “America Revised” by Frances Fitzgerald. It was a thoroughly researched history of American history textbooks up to 1979.  From this book I first learned that until the civil rights era in the 1960s, slaves were depicted as appearing “magically” at some unspecified time and disappearing after the Civil War. In other words, history texts failed to mention that slaves were forcibly abducted and removed from their homes and families. Slave owners were commonly portrayed as generous, and the KKK as having “a worse reputation than it deserves.”(p.86 if you don’t believe me). Fitzgerald also described how Native Americans were represented favorably in the 1830s and 40s, more negatively after the Civil War (“savages”, “half-civilized”), and then omitted entirely from textbooks between the 1930s and the 1960s. Since reading that book and subsequent research, I have seen more evidence that as a nation we are defined by what we teach our children about our history. Sure, bad memes enter from outside the textbooks, but missing memes can be just as crucial in forming the identity and politics of each generation.

Short Jazz Fiction Today

If I was going to construct a piece out of sampled bits, I would capture all the "empty" spaces between the solos on all the Miles Davis Quintet records and arrange them in random order. Remember randomness? The resulting sound collage of treble time and bass space would be like one of Joyce's thunderwords: Phillijojimmicobbpolchamberstonywillyumsroncrater!