CUBISM AND JUAN WILLIAMS

            picasso, the poet, 1911


Little have I done today. It's been a day of rest. Turned in last night around 3 after writing about the Elizabeth laPrelle show. Wide awake, felt like writing to you. I give myself permission to follow how I feel about something. I've done for some years without much reflection. In the work world, how you feel about it isn't a consideration. There might be cases, but I can't think of any, besides some kind of sickness. I like that state employees sometimes take "a mental health day." Since I have transcended the work world, grew up through it, I don't need mental health days. I can follow my feelings. Jr Maxwell, banjo picker, tractor mechanic, sawmiller, welder, told me more than once that following your feeling is the most important. His other counsel was patience. Patience is everything. These were observations he learned along his way by experience. Now that I'm able to follow my feelings all the time, I can't imagine not doing it. But our heads get caught up in the uncertainty that comes with "making money." Smile big at the right people, the ones with the most money, power.


That part of being subservient to the need to keep enough money coming in to meet expenses, it's gone. I don't need to influence anybody into believing I'm somebody special. I don't have to be anything at all. Up at regular time this morning, saw the movie that came in the mail, Picasso And Braque Go To The Movies. Glad it was only an hour. It had much interesting information about new film making, how Cubism became like the natural next thing. I have to say it was a good film. One thing it showed me, I really don't care anything for Cubism. I look at one of the paintings, think, Would I like to try that, just to see how it's done? Answer: No. I don't care how it's done. It was something Picasso and Braque and some others were doing at the time. Great. I'm glad for them. Still, a Cubist painting leaves me feeling nothing, certainly never excited, like something by Andre Derain can excite me, or something by Robert Rauschenberg. Seeing all the Cubist paintings and listening to very interesting artists and art historians held my interest. One thing I saw was evidence of what I've seen here and there, people in the art world saying Picasso was the last great painter of the 19th Century.


It's not my concern to make those kinds of statements. Such distinctions are other people's ways of seeing it. I have to agree. They make a convincing case, especially now, looking back over the entire "modern" period seeing where it has gone. It has gone through Marcel Duchamp. Picasso had as little influence on what followed him as Led Zeppelin, the Stones, Janis Joplin had on what followed them starting 1975, punk, unto the present. The Velvet Underground is the Sixties band whose influence evolved into punk, Bo Diddley flowing through the Velvet's sound. It is Marcel Duchamp's art that flows through the experimental time of the 20th Century. Picasso was the most famous artist through the 20th Century, because his prices were out of reach, having nothing to do with the art of what he was making. His distorted faces became an idea of 20th Century art's dissolving forms, but one that goes back before 1915, the time of Dada and Duchamp.


I found a biography several years ago of Picasso, written by Ariana Huffington, now a famous liberal. Her biography of Picasso was run down by the critics, laughed at. But I thought she did a beautiful job of portraying him. She used his astrological chart, a major no-no in serious biography writing, and she wrote of him from a woman's perspective. The critics faulted seeing him through a woman's eyes, but half the people in the world are women. Why not? She brought it forward that he was mean to his women. They groveled for him. It must have been his Spanish macho need to dominate women. Through the course of his story, I came to resent his treatment of the women in his life. He had the name a great lady's man, because he was known to have had so many. That's not really a lady's man. That's somebody with major issues. An artist. Why not tell in his biography, the biography of an artist, after all, that he had some serious psychological issues? Everybody does. Artists tend to let their issues ride on the surface, while others push their issues down out of sight. It kinda makes me gag when I hear somebody ga-ga about Picasso the great. He was just a man.


After the film, I took a nap. I was ready for a nap again after seeing the film again this afternoon. The second half hour made me want to put it on hold and have a nap. Held out. Movie over, I didn't feel like getting up. Waking from the nap, I had a cup of coffee and finished Juan Williams's book MUZZLED, which I've been in for several months. Read the first half, took a break of months and read the second half. He has tapped one of the serious problems of our time. There are so many, however, this is one of many. It was such an audacious firing of him by management at NPR, I'm glad he told the story out in the open. The best was telling Williams to talk to no one but his psychiatrist about his firing. To be told such a thing is such effrontery it needs revealing publicly. On its release, Williams was on a long string of radio and tv talk shows. His story needs telling and he told it well.



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NPR IS NOT LIBERAL

           john chamberlain, untitled



Yesterday I had the grave experience of hearing Rush Windbag-Limbaugh, the philosopher of the republican party. All I could think was Forrest Gump's mother saying, "Stupid is as stupid does." Stupid was the only word I could think. I don't like to point the finger at somebody for being stupid, because 3 fingers point back at me. Nonetheless, the obvious is obvious. Reading a tree by its fruits. A statue of Windbag could have the word on his pedestal, STUPID. Of course, American white men would disagree. It makes me sad for the white man to have such a bozo for their representative. He does not represent me. He does not represent democracy. He is the cutting edge of preparing us for full-blown police state. Of course, that's what the white man wants, law and order, keep the niggers down, more prisons, more attacking poor, defenseless countries of colored people in pre-emptive strikes to keep them from killing us first. It's the same as keeping the niggers in prison and eliminating them by capital punishment. This is policy at home, and keeping the colored poor in the rest of the world down is foreign policy. It's the core of the American belief system, like in the Randy Newman song, Rednecks, "keepin the niggers down."



Yesterday was the third time I rode with this driver in the public transportation to take me to Winston-Salem for a computer reading of my "device," the pace maker / defibrillator. That is a 5 to 10 minute procedure and that was it. Then, to get the driver's cell phone to tell him I'm ready, I had to call from the public phone, as I don't use a cell phone. It was all computer voices. Options, press 1, press 2, press 3. I needed to charge the long-distance call to my phone at home to reach his cell phone number that was set for Sparta, though he and phone were in Winston-Salem. Before it could be charged to my home phone, they had to call my number to verify it is my number. Unfortunately, I was not at home to verify it was me calling, so I couldn't make the call. I went to a desk that looked like an information desk with a woman who looked over-worked, under paid, under appreciated and in a bad mood. I explained my telephone dilemma, she made the call, that was that.



The driver came along right away and we went over to pick up 2 other riders, who would be ready soon. He had the radio on Rush Limbaugh telling the latest additions to the republican belief system, what liberals are doing that we're supposed to hate today. I rode with this driver twice before, and bore with Limbaugh on the radio. First time, I listened because I'd never heard him before. I'd heard plenty of brief clips, but never listened to him, really, to pay attention to what he was saying. It was just white working class rant to my ears, the tone of voice of every sentence starting with, By God! The rant got old fast, especially when the content was false with intent to mislead and assert his agenda, police state. Second time I rode with this driver, the Windbag and similar nonsense was on the radio the whole way there and back. I swore to myself that next time I was saying something. Didn't want to. Wanted to be nice. Don't make waves.



I'd been sitting there riding through Winston-Salem traffic reminding myself of intent to ask him to turn it off this time. We pulled into the parking lot for the people to be picked up. On the radio, this moronic voice said the 99% in the occupy ranks are going to college; when they're out of college, they'll be the 1%. Driver was starting to get out of the car. I said, "Please turn that off." He did. Wow, I thought, that was easy. It worked. I was even level-headed enough to edit the shit out of, Turn that shit off. His solution to the issue that I obviously don't want to hear it, was to turn the sound all the way to left on his speaker and keep it down low enough that I can't hear it and he can. I didn't want to disrespect him by laughing. All I could think was, Man, you embarrass yourself.



Otherwise, I take him for an intelligent man I've had enjoyable conversation with. Then I see him reaching his ear into Windbag's words the way some people listen to preachers, and he diminished before my eyes more than I wanted him to. It's not that he's a fascist, I don't care what he believes politically. But when he has to put it in my face like it's automatically expected I'm that stupid, I have to withdraw. I don't mind being thought stupid, but when I have to live with that judgment, then I have to turn and go. My self-esteem is not that desperate. The driver diminished himself further telling me that ABC, CBS, NBC and listed other tv news shows, leaving out Fox and, not thinking to include it, NPR, accusing them ALL of being LIBERAL. I didn't want to get this going. I said, NPR is definitely not liberal. The rant in his voice was the same as the radio rant he fills his head with daily.



Then I get home, after relaxing in Selma's coffee shop, visiting with Tom Herring, probably talked an hour. He's of a mind politically that I'm not, but in his case I like to hear what he has to say, and when I disagree with his way of seeing something, I'm not so sure I know why and pay more attention to what he's saying, because he's not talking nonsense. He's talking experience. I imagine Tom and the guy driving would vote the same, but not for the same reasons by any means. One, I listen to, pay attention to, because he tells me perspectives I've not not seen before. He's not swaying me toward the right wing and has no such intent. He will listen to what I have to say too. We don't write each other off as stupid because we disagree politically. Neither of us rants and neither of us is able to listen to the Windbag of the airwaves. But when I got home, I turned on NPR news. They were telling about the Iowa caucus and front runners and losers, never mentioning Ron Paul, except incidentally, just like the corporate media. It is a media-wide refusal to take him seriously. I laughed out loud. NPR liberal? Ask Juan Williams.


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SHIT HAPPENS

     robert rauschenberg, monogram, 1959




Reading Juan Williams' new book, MUZZLED. It's the story of his firing at NPR for not honoring political correctness in his private life. The shame is, it looked bad for NPR and good for Fox. I was glad to read that the two people above him, who both fired him, both were fired for implementing a stupid decision. At least there is that justice in the matter. It sounded to me like a decision that came from fear of losing one's own job, which ultimately happened. Williams' point is that the decision was made from political correctness without considering discussion on the matter. Repeatedly in his writing, he calls on people who disagree with him or with each other to talk about it, get together and exchange thoughts. Since the beginning of the Reagan Revolution's Divide & Conquer policy, we who disagree on any matters are thrown into having nothing to do with each other because we don't agree. Then there's the problem of finding someone who believes the same as I believe. Nobody. If I fail to accept the company of people I don't agree with, who don't agree with me, I end up mighty lonesome. Maybe.



It appears we've reached that place in our artificial separation for political advantage. More lonely in the crowd syndrome. Now we have political correctness for Left leaning and Right leaning. Each one berates the other and, in line with the Republican intent to put the Democrat party out of operation, the repubs viciously keep the dems defending themselves, strategy to render them ineffective. By now political correctness has spread beyond politics into about everything. Friday I was chided for saying, shit happens. There are times that is the only answer. I have to confess, I did not take it kindly. I kept my peace, but it touched something within that matters to me. I watch my language. I don't say things like goddamn and motherfucker and fuck you. I don't even say damn. If I'd said feces occurs, it would have been acceptable, like saying sanitation expert. Political correctness amounts to calling something anything but what it is. Like Juan Williams says, how can you have honest discussion restricted to the bullshit of political correctness? I've seen others dressed down for not being politically correct to the letter, and I've experienced it myself.



I don't want to let it bother me; I try inside myself to let it go. And this came while I'm in the very middle of MUZZLED. It was conversations with about anybody here from the Flatland that inspired me to read the book. Not conversations about political correctness, but restrictions dictated by political correctness. I will not edit my conversation to political correctness. And I will not honor anyone who requires it of me. I'm starting to feel the heat welling up inside. It evidently really pissed me off, because I can feel the heat rising now, making me want to say some hurtful things I don't mean. I'll let that pass, because I only want to say what I mean. Recalling a time a reader said to me of this blog, "You're so honest." My automatic answer, one I heard at the same time she did, "How else can we communicate?" And that is my meaning. If I am restricted to saying only that which is judged politically correct, it's easily taken care of. I don't have to talk. I've lived in the country so long that I'm very happy with silence, happy with solitude. And I will say shit happens whenever I feel like it.




I've spent half my life in these mountains where I have learned the importance of being who you are, or more specifically, being who I am. I am someone who recognizes that sometimes something inexplicable occurs to make a moment into something other than what we might want or expect it to be. Well, shit happens. I'm reminded of Jesse Helms making a big legislation deal over a bumper sticker that said shit happens. Shit happens is a truth and we all know it. In the time of Helms making the public fuss over the word shit, he did nothing more than draw attention to the word a million times more than the people who would ever see it on a bumpersticker. In that time I passed on the interstate a little red Yugo with a wiggling exhaust pipe, an Asian college age guy driving it and a bumper sticker that said, "Helms Happens." I thought it hilarious, but I'm not going to say Helms happens instead of shit happens. I don't like saying his name that much. And when I use the term it's for it's meaning, not to make a joke. Even my mother, as fervent a fundamentalist as you'll ever see, allows herself to say shit and damn.



I'm laughing at myself for getting so excited over so little. Yet at the same time, it hit me in the heart of something that's important to me. I refuse to honor political correctness because of its dishonesty. I refuse to be subject to political correctness. Everyone who expects it of me will be disappointed, the same as everyone in the past who has expected it of me. Oh that's just TJ being TJ. No shit. I will not talk as if I'm on television with people I think of as my friends. Anyone who overhears can think of it what they will, because they will. My alternative: shut up and stay home. I like home an awful lot anyway. And I like not talking. At home I can say all the forbidden words and put on some music from the 1950s like Muddy Waters singing Good Morning Little Schoolgirl. Well, golly gee, what do I listen to then, Pat Boone singing Metallica's greatest hits? Pop music from start to present is about sex. So one comes out and says it. Where's the big deal? Don't do as I do, do as I say; I have a feeling this is the issue here. It smelled an awful lot like it came from a woven nest of control issues. In fact, that's how I took it at first, until I recognized that political correctness is about control, and this wasn't the first time. I can't help but find it hilarious this happened in the very middle of MUZZLED. I reckon I'm just an independent old turd that will not conform. I've been out of the high school conformity factory way too long. Best place for shit like me is at home. Takes a lot less gas.



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POLITICALLY INCORRECT CURMUDGEON THE SEQUEL

lookout lookout lookout lookout

In the gloaming rain water is dripping from the leaves of trees after the rain and thunderstorm passed through an hour or so ago. The distant occasional rumble in the sky is gone by now. All is quiet with occasional sounds of drops hitting a small puddle of water. A few months ago, it was about this time, an hour or so after the storm passed, a bolt of lightning hit so near the house, the light and the bang almost simultaneous, it gave me goosebumps for half an hour. Total surprise. The kind of surprise that makes you jump. When lightning is popping all around, I get uncomfortable. Have had conversation with several friends this year who talk about being uncomfortable in a lightning storm. We've had so many this year, they stay in the front of the mind. I don't object to the rain that comes with them. Don't object to the lightning either, except sometimes it's a little unsettling.



At Selma's last night I had one uncomfortable moment. One of those moments of being taken for the opposite of my own meaning by somebody who didn't know me well enough to know I'm not television. It wasn't the kind of thing where I can say: What I really meant was.... Just have to let it go. Shit happens. In conversation with somebody I'd seen in Selma's a few times, but had never talked with, he mentioned about living near the Pioneer Eclipse plant. I mentioned some local people I knew that lived nearby. I said, "They're real hillbillies." And they are. He went into defending hillbillies saying his dad came from West Virginia, lived and learned in the good old days, then he walked away. He took it I was running mountain people down calling them hillbillies, I suppose. He doesn't know any to know that over the last 5 to 10 years the mountain people, anyway the ones I know, have taken to the word hillbilly with pride. You're darn right I'm a hillbilly and proud of it! Hands on hips. Possibly, it's a reaction to political correctness. The problem was created by talking as myself instead of adhering to political correctness, which, I'm seeing is a totally middle-class phenomenon. An offshoot of American denial.



Somebody I know sent an email regarding yesterday's post about the Cuban party at Selma's, making a statement with a question mark, "what's GOOD about anglos?" Like I'm prejudiced against his race. As I recall, all I said was anglos, as a rule, considering there is an exception in every city, don't dance with a sensuous flow like Cubans. Like dancing is the only facet of a human being? Maybe it is, spiritually, but he's an atheist and has no sight into the spiritual dimension. That's not what he means. I'm cornered by Dr Science like I'm making a sweeping generalization that includes every aspect of anglo-American culture and the nature of every individual when I say dancing. Like I've written a treatise making Cubans out to be a superior nationality to his own because I assess they dance better. Maybe he wants equal time for his nationality when I say something positive about somebody else's. Didn't make an A on that paper. It's evidently not politically correct to say white people dance like stick figures.



I heard Juan Williams interviewed on the Diane Rehm show a week or so ago. He was fired from NPR without recourse, because he said out loud he felt a bit of ill ease on a plane with middle eastern looking people on it. After a decade of government- and media-generated fear of Muslims, who can honestly say anything else without lying? The point is: lie. The irony was that he was a liberal being fired for political incorrectness off the air. I went to amazon during the radio show and put his new book on my wish list. The title is MUZZLED. Fox, a right wing Rupert Murdoch tabloid tv network, then hired him. At Fox he is allowed to be a liberal voice. At NPR he was not allowed his own voice, even in private. He's been writing this book of his experience and thoughts on the matter of press censorship since that time. His point is political correctness has gone off the deep end into absurd. It has become so absurd you can't even say white people dance like stick figures without being attacked for political incorrectness.



I sat back and listened the whole time Juan Williams was talking. He's an intelligent man, and I have to say I respect him more now than before. Before, I paid attention when he talked. Now, I really pay attention when he talks. He resonated with me. I saw on Yahoo news two or three days ago a couple of women were at Dollywood and one of them had on a tshirt that said, marriage is so gay. Management, in exaggerated mortification that a child might see the phrase and be corrupted for life, evidently made into a queer by reading it, and Dollywood might be sued by parents for turning their kid into a fag, asked her to put on another shirt. She got all shittin and made a fuss for the news in full self-righteousness. Like the old gal told to put on a shirt in Walmart. It wasn't for indecency, I'm sure. I get these emails periodically of pictures taken of people in Walmart, a whole lot more indecent than she was.



It was surely for her own benefit from apprehension she might be arrested for public ugliness, self-made ugly with tattoos and piercings and a body too old to be time-traveling in the mirror all the way back to teenager. It was the equivalent of me walking into Walmart in a thong and a big tattoo on my back that said, Abercrombie, with a red dragon breathing fire. I think of it as plain decency not wanting to cause everybody around me to recoil in horror from what I look like naked, which nobody but a true sicko would want to see, and I'd be afraid of whoever that might be. Innocent bystanders would say, "Now I seen it all." The old gal was rough to look at. If she were to walk into Selma's, my eyes would open so wide so fast they'd be in danger of popping out. She huffed and puffed in self-righteous indignation too; I have a right! She has a right, but, alas, no shame. If I were brave or senile enough to walk into Walmart in a thong (don't worry, I don't have one), I'd hope to at least have the good humor, when asked to put on some clothes, to say, "That's what I come in here for."



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