At the root of our current national dilemmas is an accepted lack of integrity. We are assaulted on all sides by corruption of such magnitude that it's hard to fathom.
Almost everything and everyone seems to be for sale. Value is assessed solely in terms of dollars. Quality is sacrificed to commerce and truthful communication is supplanted by marketing.
The type of gamesmanship that separates races, genders and ages by "preferences" is a most cynical brand. The integrity and dedication shown by American artists throughout our history provides a most needed and unequivocal counterstatement.
2 comments:
wonderful blurb, thank you. not only does this man carry a confrontational wisdom in both his voice and breath, but he also manages to deconstruct, and even devalue, the tangible side of conventional loneliness. i've prematurely been at war with currency for quite a while now and the results have been baffling, and haphazardly self-directing. for this, i blame our general response to the recent birth of global communication. we had the world at our fingertips — quite literally — and instead of exercising the sheer compatibility of such a valuable grip we wrapped those same fingertips around the cock of our own aimless desire. i've found the civilian life to be comforted by nothing but distraction and a manufactured sense of self-worth. only with genuine class, unconditional spirit, and well-bred craft — the Beast of Solid Gold — can the principled man survive. they can't touch me . . . and i know it.
I'm with you there my brother, I am with you there. That's why the article struck home (it's an excerpt from an article he wrote for CNN). And he's a somewhat contentious guy in the Jazz world for trying to encourage this idea of digging in the past in an attempt to gather knowledge in preparation for the future. The old educates the new, while the new forge a progression of individuality, as so on (this is my understanding). It's like you get some sort of Anti-Progressive backlash...and booooy does that smell mightily familiar. I'm just trying to learn WHAT happened for chrissake, leave me alone.
It's ALMOST to the point where it's like, how do I keep this AWAY from people. My theory, as this has just about come true, is that celebrity status (or popular culture status as it's come to be by and large) will be considered a lower form of civilization - a sort of Lower Upper Class. One is more respected by never indulging or being included in that pool of popular culture - and thus the values it breeds and supports will die a slow and caged death - the true affirmation of the Middle/Blue Collar/Workingman/Insert Label. One day they'll be in the ditch, eyes buzzin' around their lives, blood on their saddle.
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