I’ve been reading Marc Eliot’s biography of folksinger/activist/poet Phil Ochs, The Death of a Rebel, and this passage lept out at me, not so much because I wanted to include it in a larger project about Phil I’m working on, but because it seemed to encapsulate what I am trying to do in these slideshows I seem to be making at a remarkable pace. Eliot’s is describing how, in the early sixties in the Greenwich Village folk scene, Phil, Bob Dylan, David Cohen, and Dave Van Ronk would all pile into a cab and go to catch a double feature, often westerns:
They all loved the movies. Dylan’s use of the landscape as a metaphor for the soul (down the backroads of my mind) couldn’t be learned any better than by watching the cinematic technique of dramatizing internal conflict through visual images. (p. 82)
This technique, which dates back at least to the Icelandic sagas and probably a good deal further, applies very well to slideshows, where you are taking static visual images and–through transitions as well controlling the movement of the camera–both expressing an issue and attitudes (which may well be complex and contradictory) towards it. Ideally, of course, you want to express not only the heart (or soul) of an issue, but also touch and possibly even transform the viewers mind (and soul). In that spirit, I offer the following slideshow, inspired and accompanied by the influential (but never that successful in record industry terms) Townes Van Zandt. As the song is both mysterious and oblique, I’m not sure that I’ve really taken inappropriate liberties with it but–of course–now that I’ve put it out there that’s really for you to decide. You could argue that I’ve taken a song about human romance and turned it as a way of talking about man’s relationship to (and exploitation of) the natural world. However, the more I listen to the song, the more I find myself wondering if Townes intended it to be about romantic relationships in the first place.
I really had planned on posting a nice, uplifting Donovan slideshow after last week’s horrific “War on Drugs,” but recent events kind of forced my hand. Some people will find much of the first (and some of the second humorous), although in a rather rueful, pained way (some people will be offended by both, but they probably aren’t likely to see them in the first place). The resignation of Scott Spicer as White House Press Secretary last week and the firing of Reince Priebus as White Chief of Staff yesterday for having displeased Hair Furor, just made both of these terribly timely (The Pride Parade and Unhappy Anniversary have been previously published on The Daily Kos). Despite the introductory quote from Phil Ochs, there is nothing particularly prophetic about predicting their downfall. This is simply what happens who choose to associate themselves with Trump. The title is partly a misnomer, because only the second slideshow is really about Trump; the first focuses on people in his orbit and explores his effect on them which–despite all the notoriety, temporary power, and occasional wealth their relationship with our fearless leader brings them–seems to be more traumatic than anything else.
As I suggest above, this slideshow focuses on those who hitch themselves to Donald’s star rather than Hair Furor himself. I consciously crafted it to generally fit the narrative of one of Loudon Wainwright III’s older songs, “Unhappy Anniversary.” It basically is a love story told in reverse (sort of like Harold Pinter’s Betrayal), which I always assumed was a semi-autobiographical take on Loudon’s marriage to Kate Mcgarrigle (this was just an assumption on my part, I have no inside information). I had been playing with the idea of using it as a way of illustrating some parts of America falling out of and then in love with Trump (remember, we are going backwards in time). Anyway, this is the result (I think from late last May), and I am reasonably happy with how it turned out.
I realize that I am employing some awfully broad stereotypes here, particularly when I look at the “Trump voter” in general rather than at specific individuals, and for that I apologize if anyone is offended. For all I know, the poor whites in those photographs didn’t vote for Trump (and much of his support came from people–usually white people–who were not impoverished at all); it is at least as likely that the poor people didn’t vote at all, and I suppose it is at least conceivable that one or more of them voted for Hillary. In a similar vein, I suspect that the woman in the photograph at the top of this diary is in fact expressing ecstasy rather than horror at suddenly being within touching distance of her American idol; it’s probably an accident of timing that it comes across as horror in the photograph. Still, it was too good not to use.
As the Firesign Theater said, “Forward, into the Past!” This slideshow I made over a year ago (actually the first one I did, I think with iDVD rather than iMovie, which is why it tends to use different kinds of technical effects), at the beginning of April 2016, when it was only starting to become apparent how popular Hair Furor really was. Its obvious intent was to persuade people not to vote for Trump, and its lack of success is probably a pretty good measure of my power and influence. Looking at it now, though, I am struck by how sympathetic it was to our current president, who–through circumsances, his own choices, as well as their consequences–became the person he is. The sympathy is mostly the result of Don Mclean‘s brilliant, scathing, and little heard song, although I do seem to have chosen a number of photos in which the then-presidential candidate looks distinctly depressed and–therefore–a possible object of empathy.
The following is from my introduction to the video on YouTube: A slideshow on the life of Donald Trump. Set to “The Pride Parade” by Don Mclean. The song is from the album “Don Maclean,” which was the follow up album to his massively successful “American Pie” (still widely available on DVD). I had always assumed the song was an immensely probing, rather cynical self-evaluation following his sudden success. It obviously has a much more universal application than that, as I hope this slideshow shows (frankly, it always seemed to be about me); however, it applies quite well to our own Hair Furor.
By the way, although I obviously made it to convince people not to vote for Trump, I have to admit I now see it as profoundly empathetic to him, not as a presidential candidate, but as a suffering, isolated human being (apparently he does have an almost pathological fear of being alone). By the way, a few footnotes, the guy with the moustache early in the slide show is Trump’s father, Frederick Trump (slumlord and, apparently, KKK member). The really creepy looking guy sitting in the wing chair holding the American flag is Roy Cohn, Trump’s acknowledged mentor in dirty tricks and a self-loathing homosexual (he has a big part in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America), he also appears in a number of pictures with Trump indulging in New York City night life–I know Trump is supposed to be a teetotaler, but he sure looks stoned to me); the guy in the mug shot is Jeffrey Epstein, financier and noted pedophile. Trump has at various times claimed to be one of his best friends, and other times to have never met him. I think he was the man who procured the 13 year old girl that Trump is alleged to have raped back in the nineties (to be fair, apparently he also did some procuring for Bill Clinton too). The guy in the hospital bed that Trump appears to be looking at (they are actually two separate photos) is a very young John McCain (you might remember there was something of a controversy when Trump said McCain was no hero; only losers are POWs, after all). I am assuming you recognize Ronald Reagan, Ben Carson, and Chris Christie (I’m still impressed by that photograph of Christie talking to Trump; I didn’t even think it was possible to get a fake, forced laugh across in a still photo, but it actually does). The guy Trump is shaking hands with in the photograph above the one where he calls Fox News viewers the dumbest voters in America is David Bossie, the head of Citizen’s United (he is basically the one who opened the floodgates to money taking over U.S. politics, which of course it was well on the way to doing anyway). He also apparently helped Trump set up his campaign and hire his first group of campaign staff, as the Donald tried to assuage his wounded ego by running.
Next week, I promise something more upbeat, unless–of course–events intervene.
This is a slideshow I created essentially because I’ve always been fascinated by the multilingual pun in this Rufus Wainwright song’s title. The “Tiergarten” is a large park that sort of starts at the train station and stretches several miles through what used to be west Berlin, more or less ending at the Brandenburg gate and the Reichstag, fairly close to where East Berlin used to begin. I walked through it several years ago and–while it’s not quite as impressive as museum island–it’s still pretty wonderful. Wainwright uses the changing weather as a metaphor for the ups and downs of romance in the modern world, setting it against a catch yet understated melody. Initially, I had planned the slideshow as basically showing pictures of happy and unhappy people, together and alone, falling in love and out of love. While looking for photographs, I realized that there was a virtual treasure trove of photographs (some of which are copyrighted, and I had to pay to use) of Berlin after the war, including many from the Tiergarten, many of which are recognizable because of the statues still survive. You could say that why I’ve tried to do is expand the song’s subject from the ups and downs of romance to the ups and downs of history, by juxtaposing pictures from 1945-47 (most of the trees had been cut down to be used for firewood in 1944), with pictures that I think are largely from the last decade or so.
Although I had really intended the slideshow to be a more or less pure aesthetic object with no particular message, it sort of evolved very quickly into a rather ambivalent statement about history. Possibly because I’ve read and taught Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller too many times, but also because I have been more or less paying attention for nearly the last sixty years as well as reading a fair amount, it was hard to escape the conclusion that what we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. In the last few years, this has regressed into the even more pessimistic idea that what we learn from history is simply what we’ve already decided we are going to learn; in other words, history is basically something people cherry pick in order to justify courses of action they were going to take anyway, often for selfish, self-flattering, or vindicative reasons.
The slideshow doesn’t go quite that dark, probably because I am no longer quite as pessimistic as I was (although I doubt I’ll ever be an optimist). Instead, as well as trying to retain something of the song’s message about the vagaries of romance, it illustrates how we human beings can make a wasteland out of a park; but it equally demonstrates how we can make a park out of a wasteland, and actually it’s the latter, more optimistic, message that recieves the most emphasis as the slideshow develops. However, if you want to appreciate it (or, for that matter, if you hate it) as a purely aesthetic object with no particular message, that’s cool too.
This one’s for my dissertation director who–even if he didn’t exactly introduce me to history–certainly expanded my view and knowledge of it.
I was looking for a good version of “Leftover Wine” a song by Melanie Safka I remember listening to a lot as a teenager, with the thought of maybe making a slideshow about it. Melanie had a big hit with her single “Brand New Key,” but the album I listened to at the time was the live recording of her 1970 Carnegie Hall concert. I sort of stumbled across this, which is a song from that concert, with a slideshow already made and posted to YouTube by Adamfulgence. It’s probably as good as anything I could do, and it even includes the lyrics (which I really haven’t figured out how to include yet). I hope everyone (including my psychologist, who isn’t really a Freudian anyway) takes it in the spirit of fun and affection that I truly believe she intends (I think she still occasionally performs, so I use the present tense). I realize that it doesn’t exactly fall under Politics or History, and only vaguely under the already vague umbrella term “culture.” However, I do say this is a personal blog, so consider this a personal slideshow, even if it was created by someone else.
I’ve been wondering how to introduce a slideshow I made a few weeks ago as I continue to struggle with big questions, problems, and try to see my way through to possible (even if unlikely) solutions. Oddly enough, making these seems to be a way of processing and coming to terms with my experience. Anyway, by way of introduction, here is Loudon Wainwright III singing a live versions (from the early 90s?) of “A Hard Day on the Planet.” I believe he wrote in 1985, but it seems remarkably timely today.
Let’s face it, how many songwriters not only allude to, but actually name drop John Donne? (Van Morrison is the only other one that comes to mind).
There have been many diaries about the necessity of reaching out to people outside of the Democratic coalition, and also about the difficulty, even the impossibility, of doing so. I have been trying to work out a shared foundation to build on. Love doesn’t seem to work, perhaps because many people have so little experience with it, or have only experienced it in a dysfunctional way. I find myself wondering if pain, trauma, and suffering might actually be a more productive common element to focus on, and if it might actually be used to build some bridges. The following is my attempt to articulate through a kind of visual poem set to music, why we are where we are (“Private Hell”, how we got here (“Time for Truth”), where we are now (“Bitter Salt”), what almost everyone has in common (“Everybody Hurts”) and a possible way forward in transforming pain into beauty (“Let It Be”). I realize, of course, that the last bit is tricky (pain can perhaps be more easily turned into a desire to harm others), but it can be done, and I wonder if what is called “Creative Arts Therapy” might not be a way forward, at least for some individuals (including me), and perhaps for larger groups as well.
I’ve always found the song “Men” by Loudon Wainwright III strangely moving, ever since I first heard it on his “So Damn Happy” album. Although the concept of manhood it talks about is somewhat outdated (it was written before women were allowed to serve in combat positions in the the U.S. military), it forces me to ask some profound questions about ultimate value, as well as questions about some of the ways in which masculinity has traditionally been conceived and the conflicts and contradictions that come along with those ways of thinking. I wonder how often “women and children first,” has actually been put into practice?
Sometimes it has been (the Titanic’s 1912 sinking is certainly the most famous example, but I have little doubt there were others, some probably never noted in the historical record), and men have sacrificed their lives for others either because these others were seen as more valuable, or at least having more potential value. The song, however, is hardly a celebration of male heroism, although it acknowledges its possibility; instead, it notes how the world can be a place of horror, and that it men bear a considerable burden of responsibility for it. Man’s ultimate powerlessness in the face of circumstances is merely a subset of powerlessness of all human beings coming to terms with the final truths of existence, because of course everyone—man, woman, child, emperor, and serf—eventually dies.
I was seven when I first became aware of my own mortality. I was looking at my hand, and I suddenly became aware of all the fine lines, virtually webs of wrinkles on my hand. All at once, getting older was not something to look forward too, a future in which I had ever greater control over myself and my environment, but instead one in which my body would deteriorate, wither, and die, and that it was a process that would occur regardless of my desires or best efforts, which might (with some luck) temporarily put off but never avoid my inevitable extinction. It was as if my whole perspective on my existence pivoted around the focal point that was my hand, and nothing would ever be quite the same again.
What I am describing, of course, is the near universal experience (assuming you live long enough) of apprehending my own mortality, essentially my first encounter with existential dread. I was immediately struck by Loudon Wainwright III’s song, “Dead Man,” which I first heard a few days ago, a song that seems to have been inspired by his father’s death and going through his father’s effects at some time after the funeral. As is so often the case with Loudon’s songs, I was immediately struck by a painful honesty, leavened with his characteristic humor, and an absolute willingness to apply his insights to his own life.
The slideshow began as an exploration of universal human experience, but I realized that one could apply it to Hair Furor, and that is what I do in this version (I get a certain schadenfreude from imagining his horror if he ever saw it, which I know perfectly well is extremely unlikely). The images I picked to illustrate the first two verses are intended to illustrate mortality’s universality, while the last verse focuses more on our current leader. However, the insights apply to all human beings, including myself, and I suspect I’ll be doing another version with photographs of myself in the final section. In any case, I hope you appreciate the song (the brilliant lead guitar work is courtesy of Richard Thompson) and aren’t offended by the slide show, which will probably make some people uncomfortable, more because of the issues it explores than any particularly graphic image.
passage2truth 