12,353. RUDIMENTS, pt. 890

RUDIMENTS, pt. 890
(let me buy you a cigar...)
A long time back, about

1957 probably, my mother

used to play this annoying

song by Perry Como, some

sleepy crooner back then,

on the record player. She

had a collection of 45s,

never LP's, for some reason,

in our house. She often

played daytime music  -

real junk mostly. But,

anyway, this one tune in

particular, was called, or

had lyrics to the effect of,

'Catch a falling star and

put it in your pocket, save

it for a rainy day....' It

amounted to nonsense,

and that was acceptable

then. I guess, as today too.

It was only much later, as

I studied music and learned

about things, that I realized

it was Brahms' Academic

Festival Overture and the

stupid easy-listening pop

music industry had taken

the tune from there, a snippet

of it anyway, and added the

maudlin words of a bad

romantic ballad, or whatever

'genre' that crud was. As I

studied this, I realized how

few people knew of these

things. My mother certainly

did not. The funny story that

goes with that orchestral piece

by Brahms has some fun value

all its own. High-minded and

pompous, the University people

wanted to give Brahms an award.

He declined, and then he later

accepted, finally. And only

later did he learn getting the

award meant  he'd have to

compose a fitting musical

piece to go with it. He balked

at that, but it was too late. So,

and this is where it gets funny,

he took a group of bawdy,

school drinking songs and

torched them up 'classical'

style, orchestral, into this

suite. The attending pompous

asses present for the ceremony,

a full house of them, expected

some God-Almighty high and

fussy music for the occasion.

They got that instead. Their

outrage as they had to sit there

and suffer the music, was only

matched by the roars, cheers

and laughters  of the students.

That always reminded me of a

pretty good Mark Twain scene;

one I could visualize very well  -

him coyly ripping his 'southern'

audiences a new butthole over

their archaic racial prejudices

and blindnesses. The 'Gilded

Age' and the enforced failure

of 'Reconstruction' kind of

went together  -  and was a

perfect foil and fodder for

Twain. I guess it's a little the

same too as the Star Spangled

Banner being nothing more

than an old British drinking

song with those crazy 'American'

lyrics thrown in. Good fun.

-

Authenticity is a real thing,

a quality, and I think much of

America's premise (if you can

get over the wholesale slaughter

of Buffalo, and Indian tribes,

and then the blasted fiasco of

the Slave culture) had to do

with it. Having to cut your

own wood, and care for your

own axe, hardens a man  or

woman nicely. That's some

real stuff. Early Americans

were like moles : blind and

underground, making their

way, trying to see what worked.

It was serious stuff, the room

for mistakes was very small.

There was, as yet, no 'business'

class of bullies  -  people intent

on ruining the lands and places,

infracting everything, and

impacting it too and then

adding their illicit and screwball

dictates to it all  -  as Control,

but which they so graciously

called Law, Order, Government,

etc. It's all crap, always has been.

-

What's happened now  -  and

I'm not sure how or what Twain

would have done to handle it  -

is that any 'politics' we've got,

local councils and aldermen,

Mayors, Assembly, State, right

in up, serve 'Business' interests.

Period. Business interests alone.

And they so fucked-over stupid

not to even realize that that's what

they're doing. The chains and

the strappings of slavery, twain

or not, have never left us. They've

just been so craftily re-done now

that we have moronic executors

of business interests everywhere,

and not people's interests at all.

-

That's a pretty bad situation. It

sure ain't 'American,' and it

sure wasn't in the authentic

American cards the nation was

founded with. It's something a

newer form of a Mark Twain

would need to be dealing with.
An entirely 'other' version of this
'America' has risen up and taken
us over. Total transformation has
ensued, so that, now, those chains
and straps (and figurative whips)
are instead cheered on and gladly
accepted, all in the name of some 
false and ersatz pukefest of
flag-waving, supposed, Freedom.
There are lots of different sorts of
writers now, and I'm not saying
everyone need be like Mark Twain  -
who is sometimes a little too cutesy,
jolly, and sell-out to me  -  but the
first needed step is to be, and to
write, honestly and with feeling and
commitment.  Instead, we get the
usual comatose crapheads like Jennifer
Wiener and those bottom feeders, who
pretend to write and entertainment us
while farting into Oprah's chair.
This country sucks. Let me buy
you a cigar.