Recent History Lessons about War, Politics and Art

In today’s culture, History Lessons are more often shouted down than Ideological  Rants. Here is a little of both for you to dismiss or engage with:

The witch hunting during the Thirty-Years War in the 1600s seems parallel to the persecution of Communists between the World Wars and during the Cold War. The obvious similarity is that in both cases, the ruling class was distracting the people with an enemy besides starvation, religion and rulers. But that is not the most interesting parallel. When a prevailing system has failed most of its people, they will turn to other ways and worldviews. Thus there were many Americans of conscience who “became Communist” or had socialist sympathies during the Depression, and there were probably Christians who turned back toward paganism and its wise women when the male leaders of the Protestant and Catholic factions were obviously screwing things up pretty badly for the vast majority. The Church repressed the theatre in the 17^th century and the Republicans in the 1930s shut down the leftist leaning Federal Theatre project for similar reasons: The theatre and music have power and speaks to the people directly. Art makes people feel and think, and it can either be used to pacify or agitate. Thus, whoever censors or controls access to the Arts has a powerful tool of persuasion or distraction.

     Now to the Iraq War, which lasted longer and killed more people (including more American soldiers) than Vietnam.: http://www.viewzone.com/wardeaths.html

 Remember how artists who came out against the Iraq War were booed by the “with us or against us” faction, who saw themselves as the only patriots because they “supported the troops”? People walked out and protested Neil Young’s show in Atlanta, and booed Michael Moore when he called Bush on his bullshit at the Oscars. But it is telling that the mass media chose the anti-war protestations of the Dixie Chicks as the story, and not because they were more popular at the time, either. As long as you are going to put down the anti-war artists, why not take a shot at feminism as well?

Divisiveness between the anti-war left and the pro-empire right was of course nothing new, although it seemed new to people not old enough to have lived through the Vietnam Era. In Georgia, even in the academic oasis of Athens, my anger toward the war-mongering Bush administration was immediately shot down when I dared to express it.  I felt like a “whore in church” to use a Southern expression. More than one incident was sparked by the “Impeach Bush” sticker on my old car. A man in a brand new Lexus rolled up next to me at a stoplight after sitting behind me for a second. He rolled down his silent electric window and shouted at me, “You are not a real American!”

I replied calmly, “So half the population of the country are not real Americans?” noticing that he was not listening and did not care what I said anyway.

“He’s protecting your freedom!” shouted the redneck in the 3-piece suit and the Lexus.

“He stole the presidency, and now he’s a war criminal!”…. is what I WANTED to say, but I was afraid he would get out of the car and challenge me, so instead I repeated that I was not alone, that “ at least half of the country doesn't agree with you, either.”

He drove off hurriedly cursing me. Such was the public discourse over that War in Georgia. Atlantans who enjoyed the music of Crosby Stills Nash and Young walked out on and booed Neil’s song “Let’s Impeach the President for Lying.”  Did those people assume that because there was a down-home white country tinge to the music of CSN&Y, that old, hippie rock musicians would be sympathetic to ignorance?

Everyday Life in the Late 50s for 8/5/14.

2.  The Dentist Bites

     One of the signs of aging for me is that the dentist seems very serious and concerned about the future of my teeth these days. 

     I always choose female dentists and so far have not encountered one with large hands. Small hands help in feeling less “probed.” Lying on your back with your mouth open is beyond supplication and into the area of submission.

      The technology and presentation at the dentist have improved drastically since I was a kid with problem teeth.  But when you get old, you don’t really want to see the digital close-ups and x-rays of your worn, decaying teeth on a big screen pulled down in front of your face. The dental profession knows that on sight of these images you will exclaim in horror, “Just do it! Whatever it means, whatever it costs….fix that!”

1. Everyday Life in the late 50s with C.B. Davis, Ph.D. for 8/4/2014

 The Aisle of Incontinence

     I used to be young. It wasn’t that long ago. Today I am pushing a loudly rattling grocery cart through Target, doing some shopping for dinner. I always seem to get the loudly rattling or squeaky cart or the one with the wheel that does not  turn at all and cuts you short in the belly when you try to change direction. Maybe I should mark them with permanent color markers. Red for rattle, sapphire for squeak, blue for wheel. This is my life now.

     Suddenly I find myself in an aisle I’ve never been down or even seen before. The shelves seem towering with stacked boxes and plastic packages of….incontinency supplies. Is this a sign? Just as I am thinking about getting old I turn down an entire supermarket aisle devoted to “Depends” and its competitors. Is the sheer in-stock volume of these senior diapers due to the Baby Boomers all getting incontinent at once?

     My speed leaving the Aisle of Incontinence made the cart squeak not only faster but louder. Trying to forget about this incident, I looked around in sporting goods and realized that I really needed to find the restroom.

Below this title is a link to an article I wrote for an issue of the web journal Parapluie.  I will expand on these thoughts further with the research I have done since then. The article was also translated into German, available through the link.

Habitual Spontaneity The Improvisational Paradigm in Jazz and Comedy

by C.B. Davis

Habitual Spontaneity Part One.

Confession of a Jazz Fiend,  Part One of One

I never thought of it as something to confess until now, but it’s keeping me up. I have been contemplating two sparse choruses of a Count Basie solo for days. Not only is it economical, it’s short. Yet there is so much space in it! I have been learning the architecture of all 24 bars as a whole, their shape against the grid of bars and beats, their excruciatingly delayed symmetry. Of course when I say “the solo” it is a frozen improvisation, the trace of one, and it is only the act of tracing it off the record onto paper that makes it look anything like architecture. Yet the engineering is there. The swing of the bridge depends on the math behind the suspension. There is tension in this transcription of Basie’s use of space; swing compressed into tension like a flattened spring. So bear with me, we have to move carefully for a while before we can

see the big picture and view the solo from above.

            Down in the keyboard, a fifth above middle C, Basie starts with the smallest idea he can play and still engage the groove.  He starts an eighth note before the beginning of the first bar with a string of four eighth note ending with a G. This G, the root of the V chord in this blues progression, establishes the tonality by sounding an octave up and down before stopping briefly on a the root of the chord, middle C, with the added stability of being a quarter note, and the second full beat of the measure. There are two more notes in this phrase, both eighth notes, followed by a quarter note rest. After the C we get the first note beyond root and fifth, the E, which is the third of the C triad, thus closing off any ambiguity about what key we’re in here.  Rhythmically,  there is both symmetry and asymmetry in this design, and that is why it swings. There is a symmetry to the quarter note being preceded and followed by a figure of two 8th notes, altogether it sounds like Da-da- Dum-Da-da. But this whole phrase is assymetrical because it begins with an eighth note before the first group of two note phrases, Da-da-dad-Dum-da-da. The quarter note rest at the end of this first bar is then the ghosted symmetrical echo of the quarter note C that sounded on the second beat. In the next bar, Basie finishes the phrase with four eighth notes on the first two beats, making a two bar phrase with an eighth note “pick-up,” a rest on the 4 of the first bar and a half bar rest at the end of the phrase. There is space rhythmically in the rests taking up a little less than 3/8ths of the phrase, and there is space harmonically in that we have only hinted at the triad with one note, the rest are all just root and fifth of the chords. Although G is the outside boundary of all the phrases, the one C and the one E are inside the first grouping, and the grouping in bar 2 begins and ends with the same octave G.

            After all that space, Basie gives a relative flurry of notes in the next two bar phrase. The phrase begins with a triplet figure blues cliché, just enough of it to propel itself into the long eighth note phrase of the next bar. The blues figure, an eighth note rest,  and then an eighth note G, followed by three triplets each composed of the half step blue note up to the third  and fifth of the chord, again, all ending in that same G in that same octave from the opening. Over this last whole four bar phrase the highest note is the one most often repeated, and the pattern that the G repetition makes rhythmically is one that repeats in the chord jab accents of the second chorus!

            This chorus lasts about a half a minute in real time. I have been up all night writing it out so I could look at it for a long time, at the rhythms outlined by the spaces between notes.

And now I’m writing out my experience of writing out, the Basie solo, tracing it, playing it, touching a swinging place in the universe, an echo of ivory and starched cotton in a Kansas City dive in the 1930s.