Conversations with my niece

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus our Saviour did come for to die,
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall
With wise men and shepherds and farmers and all
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing,
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing,
Or all of God's Angels in heaven to sing,
He surely could have had it, 'cause he was the King.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus our Saviour did come for to die,
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.





I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus our saviour did come for to die,
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus 'twas in a cow's stall,
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all,
But high from God's heaven, a star's light did fall,
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing,
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing,
Or all of God's angels in heaven to sing,
He surely could have had it, 'cause he was the King.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus our saviour did come for to die,
For poor on'ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.





Blow the wind southerly,
Southerly, southerly,
Blow the wind south o'er
The bonnie blue sea.
Blow the wind southerly,
Southerly, southerly,
Blow bonnie breeze
My lover to me.

They told me last night
There were ships in the offing,
And I hurried down
To the deep rolling sea;
But my eye could not see it,
Wherever might be it,
The bark that is bearing
My lover to me.

Blow the wind southerly,
Southerly, southerly,
Blow bonnie breeze o'er
The bonnie blue sea.
Blow the wind southerly,
Southerly, southerly,
Blow bonnie breeze
And bring him to me.

Is it not sweet
To hear the breeze singing
As lively it comes
O'er the deep rolling sea?
But sweeter and dearer
By far 'tis when bringing
The bark of my true love
In safety to me.





Ombra mai fu
Di vegetabile,
Cara ed amabile,
Soave più. [x2]
Cara ed amabile
Ombra mai fu
Di vegetabile
Cara ed amabile
Soave più, soave piú

Oooooo
De vegetabile
Cara ed amabile
Soave più, soave più.





Hay and a clean stall
and ivy on a garden wall
and a sign saying sold
and no coat for the bad cold.

I believe in you.
Do you believe in me?
What do you want to do?
Are we leaving the city?

On the black road,
through the gold fields
while the fields are plowed
towards what we are allowed.

The bridle bends in idle hands
and slows your canter to a trot.
We mean to stop in increments,
but can’t commit. We post and sit in impotence.

The harder the hit, the deeper the dent.
We seek our name, we seek our fame
in our credentials, paved in glass,
trying to master incidentals.

Bleach a collar, leech a dollar
from our cents.
The longer you live, the higher the rent
beneath a pale sky,
beside the red barn,
below the white cloud
is all we are allowed.

Here, the light will seep,
and the scythe will reap,
and spirit will bend
in counting to the end.

In December of that year,
the word came down that she was here.
The days were shorter,
I was sure if she came round,
I’d hold my ground.

I can do what they alluded to,
a change that came to pass. And
Spring did range, weeping grass
and sleepless broke
itself upon my winter glass.

And I could barely breathe for seeing
all the splintered light that leaked.
A fish is fleeing, launched in flight
but starched in light,
bright and bleeding, bleach the night
with dawn deleting in that high sun,
after our good run,
when the spirit bends
beneath knowing it must end.

And that is all I want here,
to draw my gaunt spirit to bow
beneath what I am allowed,
beneath what I am allowed.

On Memorial Day

Why does God permit suffering?

The State tells us that the murder of ourselves by ourselves is acceptable, or, rather, neccessary. And so, on Memorial Day, in America, we might wonder if we should suspend this question or interrogate it.

In memoriam, in marmoreal memorial, today, our war dead, we remember, and those who made war and lived through it. Even if your sacrifice meant little to you, it means a great deal to me.

We remember you, today.

What is Jazz? This is Jazz. Toxic.

What is Jazz? This is Jazz.

I am late to the appreciation of Jazz Appreciation Month, again, the spur, as always, being, my friend, the essential, Rose, who was raised, as I was--a hopeful, white, American child--in a house of Jazz.

I always seek the liminal, the undefinable, the indecipherable, the edge-places, and in-between places. All of the true, American art forms belong to this space of uncertain certainty: they all come from and are beholden to earlier expressions and traditions, yet pose a problem-solution so special that we decide, upon some thoughtful, knowledgeable, respectful analysis that it presents a unique position. 

Not even Athena sprang Athena-like from the forehead of Zeus. Her mother, Metis, the Titan of Wisdom, whose progeny would be greater than the father, were that prophecy allowed to take place properly, had been swallowed as the fly into which she'd transformed herself to escape Zeus' amour. There are two great prophecies, that I know of, in Greek mythology, calling out the offspring of the mother as greater than the father, the other being a sea goddess, Thetis. Both prophecies encounter Zeus, who--wily as Odin and the other Skyfathers--sidesteps the prophetic outcome made in the lap of a woman, which is to say, a womb. Who says the Fates can't be denied?

Metis. Thetis.

In the case of Thetis, Zeus, who "loved" her but, given her prophetic baggage, was unwilling to chance his throne on his lust, through an incredible public relations coup, relegated her offspring, through a mortal father, King Peleus, to the mortal dimension, as Achilles, mightiest of doomed mortals. Similarly, Athena--as a woman, not a man, as a goddess of wisdom and war, out-does her father in every way; she is her father's favorite--poses no threat to the line of succession and the base of power, since only male offspring pose that issue of issue. And thus, the rape of her mother, and the prophecy about her, was constrained, contained, diffused, and defused into the most fascinating of deities, as a female, always-virgin god.

All the post-indigenous-people, indigenous, American forms are based on a kind of love, appropriation, and violence: the Blues, Jazz, the Broadway Musical, and Rock and Roll--all of which, constantly, bleed into each other. Miscegenation is our American past and our American future. It is our heritage, our dowry, our inheritance, our legacy, and our estate. Just ask Thomas Jefferson.

Welcome to Jazz Appreciation Month.

Toxic

Baby, can't you see,

I'm calling.

A guy like you

Should wear a warning.

It's dangerous.

I'm falling.

There is no escape;

I can't wait;

I need a hit;

Baby, give me it;

You're dangerous;

I'm loving it.

Too high,

Can't come down;

It's in the air

And it's all around.

Can you feel me, now?

With a taste of your lips,

I'm on a ride:

You're toxic,

I'm slipping under.

A taste of your poison paradise,

I'm addicted to you,

Don't you know that you're 

toc-sick,

And I love what you do,

Don't you know that you're 

toxic?

It's getting late

To give you up;

I took a sip

From my devil's cup;

Slowly,

It's taking over me:

Too high,

Can't come down;

It's in the air,

And it's all around.

Can you feel me now?

With a taste 

of your lips,

I'm on a ride.

You're toxic,

I'm slipping 

under;

Taste of a poison paradise,

I'm addicted to you;

Don't you know that you're toxic?

And I love what you do,

Don't you know 

that you're toxic?

Intoxicate me, now,

With your lovin', now,

Think I'm ready, now,

Think I'm ready, now.

Toxicate me, now,

With your lovin', now,

Think I'm ready, now,

Think I'm ready, now.

Toxicate me, now,

With your lovin', now,

I think I'm ready, now,

I think I'm ready, now.

I think I'm ready, now.

I think I'm ready, now.

Toxicate me, now,

With your lovin', now,

I think I'm ready, now,

Think I'm ready, now.

Now.

Now.

Now

Now.

Now-ow.

Now.

Now

Now.

Now.

Now

Now. Now. Now. Now. Now. Now Now. Now. Now. Now.

I think I'm ready, now,

With a taste of lips,

I think I'm ready, now.

I think I'm ready, now.

Intoxicate me, now,

With your lovin', now,

I think I'm ready, now,

I think I'm ready, now.

Intoxicate me, now,

With your lovin', now,

I think I'm ready, now,

I think I'm ready, now.

Yael Naïm, "Toxic." 

"Toxic" is a song recorded by American singer Britney Spears for her fourth studio album In the Zone (2003). It was written and produced by Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg (known collectively as Bloodshy & Avant), with additional writing from Cathy Dennis and Henrik Jonback. 

On the Current Antisemitism

Okay, so this must be the proof in the pudding. 

Since the election, the United States has seen a spike in reported hate crimes and violent acts against a whole array of people--this is reported, countable, legible, provable, and obvious. The high-profile ones are on the national news, but you can see them in your local newspaper, on your city news broadcasts, you can hear about them on the radio, and you sometimes witness them in person, when you are not the victim of them. This is happening.

Obviously, Muslims--or people perceived to be "Muslim"--would be the first recipient of this local (but also executive and, thus, national) aggression: mosques, individuals, islamic organizations.

Then "immigrants"--but not all immigrants, really, just immigrants of, shall we impolitely call it, in that charmingly, antique phrasing, a "duskier hue": apparently that's Indians (from India), Sikhs (turbans: because turbans are exotic and the exotic is unfamiliar and the unfamiliar is frightening and what frightens us is automatically dangerous), anyone suspiciously Latin (i.e. "illegal Mexican" rapist/murderer/au pair/gardener), and anyone else with brown skin ("Go back to your country!"). 

Then we have African-Americans--you know, "Black people"? You've probably heard of them.

This comes as no surprise, since targeting black people is a national pastime and seems to be written into our national DNA, when it is not written into our national Constitution. (The horrible words, the curses, the slurs, the lies, half-lies, statistics, the violent words uttered against African-Americans, Blacks, People of Color, and Negroes in this-great-country-against-itself, need never be repeated again, to my way of thinking. We have all heard them, far too much, in our minds, in our homes, in our beds, on television, in books and magazines, and on the street.)

Okay, there's been a spike in violence against gay people, particularly men ("Trump won! Get used to it!"), which is not that weird, considering the kinds of people we're talking about, and how late the gay have been to the party of even tacit or expected "tolerance"/"acceptance." 

But the one I really can't wrap my stupid, fucking, American mind around is the spike in antisemitism everywhere, and against long-established synagogues (Sure! Why not attack a neighborhood place of worship? Synagogue=Mosque) and Jewish community centers.

When people are clearly other by skin color, the cowards go after them, sure.

Muslim, immigrant, dirty Mexican rapist, black man--I get it. It's asinine and repugnant, but I can at least follow the ham-fisted, racist logic at work, here. 

With our Jewish friends and neighbors, we enter into a strangely different territory.

This is not just because these individuals and communities have been here, on our shores, for so long (Black people, after the First Nations and Native Americans, after the Dutch, are the people who have lived here the longest: yes, they were slaves in New Amsterdam), but because of Jewish assimilation to American-ness, especially during the postwar period; their imbrication with American culture; their strange invisibility and presence--their frequent ability to pass, especially after entering the current period, where black Irish, Italians, Greeks, mediterraneans, and so on, were no longer considered "animals," in America--and the long, difficult history with and against antisemitism in the United States; our experience and non-experience/our knowledge and non-knowledge/our non-complicity and complicity in the Holocaust; our relationship politically, imperially, territorially, and culturally to Israel: for all these reasons, the sudden temerity in the attacks against Jewish cultural centers and people in the U.S.A., after the election, really pulls the mask off the clown.

Oh... It's YOU!

And, even if all the people committing the violence aren't motivated by the same animus, they are each being animated by each others' animus. 

And so, the oldest--the foundational--bigotry in Christendom; that most European of christian hatreds; that two thousand-year-old, murderous rage rises again, after being told to settle down for so long: Jew-hatred; Jew-murder; God-murder; Antisemitism: two-thousand years of death, pogrom, exile-in-exile, status-without-status, nationality-without-nationality. This? Again?

To my mind, this is how we should know it's serious.

What would Jesus do?

Non-Laughter, Laughter, Perhaps Syllables, or Only Phonemes in Western Civilization

I have long been interested in the representation and musicalization of laughter, or that representation of that which we take as laughter. It is a long history, and a rich one. I offer, here, only a small sample, a cross-section, an intersection, of texts, the crossroads, where Death--or its undead refusal, its burial, or the deal with the Devil--and the Devil, as the God, always seems to be, and be in the details.

My aunt, who is a nun, once said to me, a long time ago, "How can we know what other people know, when we can barely know ourselves?" She has since repudiated this remark, but for me, it was foundational. And psychoanalysis--and our current political situation--bears this observation out. How can we know another, when we can barely know ourselves? We insist on imputing intentions and meanings to others, when we barely understand our own. The lie tells the truth. The tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive, tells a better truth than when we try to tell the truth. And our understanding of another, tells us so much more about ourselves. Is someone laughing, or just extending her lips and making a sound?

Of course, we begin with Mozart.

Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen

Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,

The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,

Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Death and despair flame about me!

Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro
If Sarastro does not through you feel

Todesschmerzen,

The pain of death,

So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr.
Then you will be my daughter nevermore.

Verstossen sei auf ewig,
Disowned may you be forever,

Verlassen sei auf ewig,
Destroyed be forever

Zertrümmert sei'n auf ewig
Abandoned may you be forever,

Alle Bande der Natur
All the bonds of nature,

Wenn nicht durch dich!
If not through you

Sarastro wird erblassen!
Sarastro becomes pale! (as death)

Hört, Rachegötter,
Hear, Gods of Revenge,

Hört der Mutter Schwur!
Hear a mother's oath!


W. A. Mozart (music), Emanuel Schikaneder, (libretto), Lucia Popp (vocal), "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen," Die Zauberflöte, 1791.




Glitter and be Gay

And, here I am,
my heart breaking,
Forced to glitter,
Forced to be gay.

Glitter and be gay,
That's the part I play;
Here I am in Paris, France,
Forced to bend my soul
To a sordid role,

Victimized by bitter, bitter circumstance.
Alas for me! Had I remained
Beside my lady mother,
My virtue had remained unstained
Until my maiden hand was gained
By some Grand Duke or other.

Ah, 'twas not to be;
Harsh necessity
Brought me to this gilded cage.
Born to higher things,
Here I droop my wings,
Ah! Singing of a sorrow nothing can assuage.

And yet of course I rather like to revel,
Ha ha!
I have no strong objection to champagne,
Ha ha!
My wardrobe is expensive as the devil,
Ha ha!
Perhaps it is ignoble to complain...
Enough, enough
Of being basely tearful!
I'll show my noble stuff
By being bright and cheerful!
Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha!

Pearls and ruby rings...
Ah, how can worldly things
Take the place of honor lost?
Can they compensate
For my fallen state,
Purchased as they were at such an awful cost?

Bracelets... lavalieres
Can they dry my tears?
Can they blind my eyes to shame?
Can the brightest brooch
Shield me from reproach?
Can the purest diamond purify my name?

And yet of course these trinkets are endearing,
Ha ha!
I'm oh, so glad my sapphire is a star,
Ha ha!
I rather like a twenty-carat earring,
Ha ha!
If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are!

Enough! Enough!
I'll take their diamond necklace
And show my noble stuff
By being gay and reckless!
Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha!

Observe how bravely I conceal
The dreadful, dreadful shame I feel.
Ha ha ha ha!

Leonard Bernstein (music), Richard Wilbur (lyrics), Barbara Cook (vocal), "Glitter and be Gay," Candide, 1956.




O Superman (for Massenet)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

O Superman.
O Judge.
O Mom and Dad.
Mom and Dad.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

O Superman,
O Judge,
O Mom and Dad,
Mom and Dad.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Hi! I'm not home right now,
But if you want to leave a message,
Just start talking at the sound of the tone.

Ah, ah-ah,
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

Hello? This is your Mother.
Are you there?
Are you coming home?

Ah, ah, ah, ah-ah, ah, ah.

Hello? Is anybody home?

Well, you don't know me,
but I know you,
And I've got a message
to give to you,
Here come the planes.

So, you better get ready,
Ready to go;
You can come as you are,
but pay as you go,
Pay as you go.

Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

And I said: Okay,
Who is this really?

And the voice said:

This is the hand,
the hand that takes.
This is the hand,
the hand that takes.
This is the hand,
the hand that takes.

Here come the planes.

They're American planes,
Made in America,
Smoking
or non-smoking?

Ah, ah-ah,
Ah, ah, ah, ah.

And the voice said:
Neither snow nor rain,
nor gloom of night,
Shall stay these couriers
from the swift completion
Of their appointed rounds.

Ah, ah-ah,
Ah-ah,
Ah-ah,
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah-ah.

'Cause when Love is gone,
there's always Justice;

And when Justice is gone,
there's always Force;

And when Force is gone,
there's always Mom.

Hi Mom!

Ah, ah,
Ah, ah-ah.

So hold me, Mom,
in your long arms,
So hold me, Mom,
in your long arms,
In your automatic arms,
Your electronic arms,
In your arms.

So hold me, Mah-ahm,
in your long arms,
Your petrochemical arms,
Your military arms,
In your electronic arms.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah....

Laurie Anderson, "O Superman (for Massenet)," Big Science, 1982.



I have written a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City. She's a maid. She has two shopping bags. When the bus stops abruptly, she laughs. If the bus stops slowly, she laughs. If the bus picks up someone, she laughs. If the bus misses someone, she AH-ha-ha-ha. So, I watched her for about nine months. I thought, "Mm, uh-huh." Now, if you don't know black features, you may think she's laughing, But she wasn't laughing, she was simply extending her lips and making a sound, Eh, heh-heh-heh! I said, "Oh, I see. That's that survival apparatus. Now, let me write about that to honor this woman, who helps us to survive." By her very survival--Miss Rosie--through your destruction, I stand up. So, I use the poem with Mister Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "Masks," and my own poem for old black men. Mister Dunbar wrote "Masks" in 1892.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O my God, our tears
To thee from tortured souls arise.
And we sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world think otherwise,
We wear the mask!

When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that’s walked,
A song was spoke,

I laugh so hard, Ha-ha! I almost choke,
When I think about myself.

Seventy years in these folks’ world.
The child I works for calls me "girl";
I say, “HA-HA-HA, Yes ma’am,” for working’s sake.
I'm too proud to bend
And too poor to break,
So, I laugh, until my stomach ache,
When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard, HA-HA-HA, I nearly died.
The tales they tell, sound just like lyin',
They grow the fruit, but eat the rind.
I laugh, AH-HA-HA-HA, until I start to cryin',
When I think about myself,
And my folks, and the little children.

My Fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank,

And they nod, like broken candles,
All waxed and burnt profound
They say "But, Sugar, it was our submission
That made your world go round."

There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block,
The chains and slavery's coffles,
The whip and lash and stock.

My Fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound,
They say, "But Sugar, it was our submission
And that made your world go round."

They laughed to shield their crying ,
They shuffled through their dreams
They step 'n' fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.

I understand their meaning,
It could and did derive,
From living on the ledge of death,
They kept my race alive.
By wearing the mask.

HEH-heh-heh,
Ah, HA, HA, HA, HA!
HA, HA, HA. HA, HA!
Aaah-aaaAHH!

Paul Laurence Dunbar and Maya Angelou, We Wear the Mask/When I Think about Myself/Song for the Old Ones, 1892, 19-something, Angelou's poem dating is not coming up on Google, which is its failure. The colloquium on Evil, from which this performance was taken, was held in Texas in 1988.

This is Prophetic

In the bedroom communities let us be taken by surprise.
Yes! Let the band play on and on,

This is Prophetic

Smiling and waving, Mrs. Nixon and her entourage leave the commune and proceed to the next stop on her tour: the Summer Palace where she is photographed strolling through the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, the Hall of Happiness in Longevity, the Hall of Dispelling the Clouds, and the Pavilion of the Fragrance of Buddha. She pauses in the gate of Longevity and Good Will to sing.

PAT

This is prophetic! I foresee a time will come when

luxury dissolves into the atmosphere like a perfume,

and everywhere the simple virtues root

and branch and leaf and flower.

On that bench there we'll relax

and taste the fruit of all our actions.

Why regret life which is so much like a dream?

Let the eternal plan resume.

In the bedroom communities let us be taken by surprise.

Yes! Let the band play on and on,

let the stand-up comedian finish his act,

let Gypsy Rose kick off her high-heeled party shoes;

let interested businessmen speculate further,

let routine dull the edge of mortality.

Let days grow imperceptibly longer,

let the sun set in cloud;

let lonely drivers on the road pull over for a bite to eat,

let the farmer switch on the light over the porch,

let passer by look in at the large family

around the table, let them pass.

Let the expression on the face

of the Statue of Liberty change just a little,

let her see what lies inland:

across the plain one man is marching...

the Unknown Soldier has risen from his tomb,

let him be recognized at home.

The Prodigal. Give him his share:

the eagle nailed to the barn door.

Let him be quick.

The sirens wail as bride

and groom kiss through the veil.

Bless this union with all its might,

let it remain inviolate.

John Adams (composer), Alice Goodman (librettist), "This is Prophetic," Nixon in China, 1987.

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Everyone

I see the past three presidential elections--but let's include the midterms, too--as working out interesting and strange oppositions; as exemplifying sometimes murky notions of investment in somewhat murky abstractions. So--if you like, if you want to get really barbaric about it--you could say, if you wanted, that it came down to Change trumping Hope.

I don't know if I feel that the Obama administration ended up fulfilling its hope for Hope, partly because Obama let me down in his aggressive deportation program, his continuation of the W. Bush surveillance of the American people, his support of TPP, and other programs. However, and it is a BIG HOWEVER, while his administration oversaw the strengthening and stimulating of our economy, while it succeeded in bringing unemployment down, most of his actions--not just the positive ones, like the Affordable Healthcare Act, while not wholly successful, was hardly a failure--were stymied, sabotaged, brought up for repeal, and/or stopped by the Republican-controlled houses of Congress: everything from ambassadorial and cabinet nominations to, well, everything else, including his last Supreme Court nominee.

So, my question is this: if you wanted Change, why did you re-elect Republicans to control Congress and your state legislatures and governorships, when they have not only proven to be the source of our federal gridlock and brinkmanship, but said eight years ago that that is exactly what they were going to do?

Or was the "Change" you meant something traveling under a different name?

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone.

I hope you're allowed to--or have thought to--celebrate it.

Bering Down

N.

We are all immigrants to this land..
.
No human life took hold in the western hemisphere, until immigrants, who crossed the Bering Strait/Sea, long ago, in our prehistory, settled it.

After that, the settlers were all people from across either of the oceans that nestle us in "the West"--an area surprisingly "protected" by the, so-called, Monroe Doctrine--some of them, even in the earliest days before the Republic for which the American flag stands, brought here forcibly to labor without pay and to make more people, their children, who would also be forced to labor without pay, and to foster grandchildren, great, great-great, and great-great-great, great-great-great-great grandchildren, to be ensnared until the present day and after in American law and the "Justice" system, to be imprisoned, paid lower wages, to be denied the franchise, and to, on the average, die at a younger age, unless they were made to join the lowest ranks of the armed forces as cannon fodder or, often unarmed, shot dead by the police.

We are all immigrants to this land. This land, which is your land, this land, which is my land, from California to the New York Island(s), from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters. This land, which, in point of actual fact, was not made for you and me, but which is a land upon which we are all living, so, we certainly had better start figuring out how to get along better, because none of us is going anywhere. Except for the very old, who tend to vote Republican.

We are all immigrants to this land.

"Don't freak out, bitch. Just be Steve, Gay Anthropologist!"

I, too, am a notebook guy at the freak show, or, as I say of myself at circuit parties: "Don't freak out, bitch. Just be Steve, Gay Anthropologist!"

This is what I do now in the world that has become a circuit party. I don't go to circuit parties, I don't need to. The world is a circuit party I haven't been invited to.

Mostly, I just want to apologize to the other species stuck on this planet with us while we circle the fucking drain. DOLPHINS, CRUSTACEANS, BEES, BATS, BUTTERFLIES, and BIRDS! I'M SORRY WE'RE TAKING YOU DOWN WITH US! I'M REALLY SORRY!

Try to feel as I do, that the planet will heal after we're gone. We can't kill the planet. We can't kill the planet. After the various other species have achieved ascendance and recreated-rediscovered poetry over and over again and done a better job than we ever did, after that, when this planet is a burnt-out cinder circling a sun about to nova, we won't even be a memory.

Remember that, Donald Trump--and the rest of you fucktard idiots--not even the insects will trouble themselves to ever even remember, or know, you ever even fucking existed, you vile excrement.

And that's all we have time for! HAVE A GREAT DAY! :o)

Now. Watch this shit:

I Post Song Lyrics from Time to Time: Zip

I was twenty, I looked forty. I got the job. 

-- Elaine Stritch

Oh, Elaine, will ya for Chrissake go to New Haven and sing the fuckin’ song? 

-- Ethel Merman

Zip

I’ve
Interviewed Pablo Picasso
And a countess, named di Frasso.
I’ve interviewed the great Stravinsky.

But 

My greatest achievement
Is the interview I had
With the star who worked for Minsky.

I met her at the Yankee Clipper,
And she didn’t unzip one zipper.
I said, “Miss Lee, you are such an artist,
Tell me why you never miss.

"Whadda you think of
While you work?”
And she said, “While I work,
My thoughts go something like this:

"Zip! Walter Lippmann wasn’t brilliant today.
Zip! Will Saroyan ever write a great play?

"Zip! I was reading Schopenhauer last night.
Zip! And I think that Schopenhauer was right.

"I don’t wanna see Zorina.
I don’t wanna meet Cobina.
Zip!
I’m an intellect-ual.

"I don’t like a deep contralto,
Or a man whose voice is alto.
Zip!
I’m a het'roseck-sual.

"Zip! It took intellect to master my art.
Zip! Who the Hell is Margie Hart?

"Zip! I consider Dali’s paintings passé.
Zip! Will they make the Metropolitan pay?

"Zip! English people don’t say 'clerk,' they say 'clark.'
Zip! Anybody who says 'clark' is a 'jark.'

"I adore the great Confucius,
And the lines of luscious Lucius.
Zip!
I am so ecletic.

"I don’t care for either Mickey,
Mouse or Rooney makes me sicky.
Zip!
I’m a little hectic.

"Zip! My artistic taste is classic and dear.
Zip! Who the Hell’s Lili St. Cyr?"


Zip
Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Lorenz Hart
Written for “Pal Joey”
"Zip" was introduced by Jean Casto.
For the highly successful revival of "Pal Joey" in 1952, the song was sung by a certain Elaine Stritch.

On Hegel

Hegel founded reality by describing it.

-- Me. <--> I actually said this

On the Melancholy of Los Angeles

It was the second time I'd flown into LAX.

The day was late, the sun was setting, and the plane pulled itself across the low sky over countless suburban ranch houses, each with a single, very tall palm tree in the front yard, each palm like an enormous Bob-Barker microphone.

The sky was orange and blue, the light was all-golden, and all I could think about was of the countless beautiful people who had come to Los Angeles to be movie stars, didn't, met each other, moved into homes like these, and had beautiful children. It was the most dire pronouncement on humanity, and it suddenly made me feel an undefinable emotion for this town of dreams, this town of broken dreams.

I had thought that town was New York. I know New York really is the town of broken dreams, now--they are different dreams, though, broken in different ways for different dreamers of different dreams--but then, I condescended to this other proposition, which I still, by the way, believe, entirely. "Los Angeles" just means "The Angels," it is only its proximity to English that we feel it to be the city of lost angels. Which, of course, it very much is, as well.

The capital of the 19th Century was Paris--they say (Walter Benjamin may have been the first)--and New York, the capital of the 20th. Los Angeles was foretold to be the capital of the 21st. I think we all know this optimism was misplaced. The capital of the 21st Century will be outside the United States, probably in China, or some other sleeping giant our leaders have neglected to identify correctly. It wouldn't be the first time and it certainly won't be the last. I digress.

The first time I came to LA, it was to visit two friends who lived there. I visited the same friends the second time, as well, several years later. The first time was in the late 1990s, and I stayed with an ex, sleeping on the couch, at his basement apartment in (the, to me, ironically-enough named) Manhattan Beach--he and his boyfriend had sex on the bed next to the couch on the second morning, which I slept through. The three of us went to a West Hollywood bar, so I could take in the local fauna: a place where I, quite literally, looked like no one else--long hair, beard, an old, black Ohio State tank top, chest hair. I don't think I ever felt so completely invisible in my life, so studiously I was ignored. Recounting it later, for years, I dismissively described the experience by saying I had "too much texture" for LA. I now think that assessment was completely wrong for being so correct. The only person I didn't know who engaged with me was a doctor from New Orleans on a tour of California hospitals and cities, looking for a new world after his residency. Reader, he ended up in San Francisco, but to tell you how I know that would require another paragraph I'm unwilling to write, but I will say that I never saw or had contact with him again.

After these minor mis-non-adventures, I stayed with the other friend, a lawyer from Akron I met in Chicago, who lived in Beverly Hills. It was he who told me that LA would be the capital of the 21st Century, as he drove me around his city in his Cadillac one night, a gin and tonic in his lap. He was impressed that when stopping at a gas station, I cleaned his car windows with the station squeegee, while he filled his car tank. I felt like I was on the cover of a 1960s science fiction novel: a crashed spaceship, half submerged in the tundra of a dead planet under a black, starry sky. I left Los Angeles believing it to be the loneliest place on earth.

The third time I went to LA, my brother's wife was living there, with my brother. I was there for work, staying at an ornate and old, haunted hotel, where the first Oscars were held, in the neglected downtown. I was within walking distance of an amazing indoor market that has tons of produce, sea food, and many dead animals, all perfect for eating, and all at great prices. I had an interaction with a stranger in my huge hotel room, which proved unsatisfying. 

One night, a close friend and I went to visit my brother's wife and my brother at their home in the hills surrounding a park. After a time, we decided to go for a drive to, first, a favorite taco cart off an empty supermarket parking lot. Everything we ate was delicious. I got one tongue and one intestine taco. I wouldn't have had it any other way. 

Then we drove to a strange French/French-American restaurant, which was decorated more or less in the style of my parents' ancient Toledo Tudor house, circa 1976, only with a lot more deep reds in the palette--it was positively Medieval in the best of all possible ways. The food was great--we got frites and maybe something disgusting I would love--and drinks. A sessions-musicians band played classic rock with superb style. 

But the part I'm leaving out is what happened on the way. As the four of us wound down and up and around the hills around Echo Park, a fog clung to the tarmac; shrouded the lush, dark, tree branches, clinging like another layer of ghost-leaves upon the leaves; and hung as sheets on a line at every dip or decline in the road. The car windows were open and the air was cool, damp, succulent, full of spectres, and scented with some indefinable sense of danger. It was then that I remembered that Los Angeles is the mother of film noir. And I suddenly felt a rush of love for this strange, sad, fabulous, beautiful, spooky town of dreams and broken dreams.

And now, for the song.

Screenwriter's Blues

Exits to freeways twisted like knots
on the fingers
Jewels cleaving skin between
breasts

Your Cadillac breathes four hundred horses over blue lines
You are going to Reseda to make love to a model from Ohio
Whose real name
you don't know

You spin

like the Cadillac was overturning down a cliff 

on television

And the radio is on 

And the radioman is speaking

And the radioman says 

women were a curse
So men built 

Paramount studios
And men built 

Columbia studios

And men built 

Los Angeles

It is 5 a.m. 

and you are listening 

to Los Angeles

It is 5 a.m. 

and you are listening 

to Los Angeles

And the radioman says 

it is a beautiful night out there
And the radioman says
rock and roll lives

And the radioman says 

it is a beautiful night out there 

in Los Angeles
You live
in Los Angeles 

and you are going to Reseda
We are all in some way or another going to Reseda someday 

to die

And the radioman laughs 

because the radioman 

fucks a model, too

Gone savage 

for teenagers with automatic weapons and boundless love
Gone savage 

for teenagers who are aesthetically pleasing
In other words fly 

Los Angeles beckons
The teenagers 

to come 

to her 

on buses

Los Angeles loves love

It is 5 a.m. 

and you are listening to Los Angeles

It is 5 a.m. 

and you are listening to Los Angeles

I am going to Los Angeles 

to build a screenplay about
Lovers who murder each other

I am going to Los Angeles 

to see my own name on a screen
Five-feet-long and luminous

As the radioman says
it is 5 a.m.
and the sun has charred

The other side of the world 

and come back to us
And painted the smoke over our heads 

an imperial violet

It is 5 a.m., and you are listening to Los Angeles
It is 5 a.m., and you are listening to Los Angeles

You are lissstening
You are lisssstening
You are lisssssstening
You are lissssssstening
You are lissssssstening
You are lisssssssstening
You are lisssssstening
You are lisssssssstening
You are lisssssssstening
You are lissssssstening
You are lissssssstening
You are lissssssssstening
You are lisssssstening
You are lissssss-
tening

To Los Angeles

"Screenwriter's Blues" is track #7 on the album, Ruby Vroom, and track #1 on the album, Lust In Phaze: The Best Of Soul Coughing. It was written by Michael Doughty, Mark Degliantoni, Yuval Gabay, and Sebastian Steinberg. They were Soul Coughing.

On Watching "The Walking Dead" II

This image is a metaphor for the show. As such. The dream-like nature of the moment did not prevent me from weeping.

They measure you by what they can take from you. By how they can use you to live.

Meanwhile, back at the end of the world in Georgia, a metaphor is being deployed. And that metaphor is explicating the conflict between, what I would call, Love and right-wing Conservative politics and policies and policing.

On the one hand, we have Our Team that we're rooting for, going through it. Like REALLY going through it. Struggling to find ways to maintain community, friendship, family--and therefore Love--and not turn into the others: not the undead, mindless destroyers, but the living ones, who give up on everything that marks civilization, as such--in a bid, not just to survive, but to dominate--secure in the belief that domination and survival are only coextensive and/or co-Terminus, instead of considering the possibility of them being coterminous.

Rick and Carol's incredibly even, often dead-seeming stare not to the contrary--a stare that, in contrast to most of their actions, only marks the success of their struggle to stay human--our team offers a very textured, layered series of responses regarding one's self-identity and one's self-delusion (often the same thing), one's ability to create meaning, one's love for one's sister or brother, whether one is one's sister's keeper, and whether one is responsible for civilization, or not. I hold that we are responsible for all these things. And I hold to this response-ability, not out of some misplaced nostalgia for a better time in the past, but out of a misplaced interest, desire, and demand for the future. In fact, I require it. I require it of me and I require it of you. 

One's ability to create meaning is core to this metaphor, not as the problem of not creating meaning--a problem we don't have--but out of the necessity and the endless human imperative to do so. We cannot not create meaning. What separates us from the animals and insects--from what we presume to call "Nature"--is meaning-production, in all of its ambiguities, vagaries, and lies. This is the essence of language. 

The issue is not that other animals don't have symbol-systems or feelings--of course, they do--it is just that our symbol-system is shot through with a kind of ambiguity and play that I believe is unknown to our animal friends. Cats are the Japanese of animals; Americans are the dogs; yet, for all the richness of the animal symbol-systems, they pale before ours. It's not their fault. The Axial Age marked a simultaneous and gigantic leap "forward" from them, and we don't know why--no, we don't; not exactly; not really--nor whereto and to what end, though some of the more depressing indicators are clear. 

Certainly, animals have their tools, and their feelings, and their language. Notice their industrial revolution. Marvel at their gridlocked, ideology-consumed, plutocrat-run political systems. Look at their nation-states and their wars, their weapons of mass destruction, their hedge markets and stock exchanges; their banks, pharmaceutical companies; their mustard gas and guns and hydrogen ordnance; their drug addictions and world-wide religious affiliations; look at their laws; look at their writing, their theater and symphonic works and dance vocabulary; their poetry and trash fiction; look at their Jim Crow laws and concentration camps; look at their schools; their utopian claims and their dystopic interventions; look at their lawyers, prostitutes, drug dealers, accountants, lobbyists, and markets; behold their polemics and rhetorics, logics and philosophies; their intense and subtle disagreements about these things; witness their drive for nothing but money; witness their money, their lotteries and casinos, their mafia; their shamans, soothsayers, clergy, and holy men; witness their mystics; and grow to appreciate their full-scale dismissal of climate change, which affects them least of all since they live outside: they have no inside, no insulation, no thermostat, and no aeroplane to take them on vacation; they have no vacation; they have no work, no movies, no television, and no internet. They are fundamentally not like us. So, please, stop boring me with your comparisons to the animals and insects; please stop telling me how much we're alike, because we are not. Your statements are only metaphors as justifications for your behavior--and The Walking Dead is shot through with these comparisons from suitably unsuitable characters--yet I've never seen any "natural" thing do what you do. No; we're stuck with each other, you and I, in this world not created by animals, but modified by animals with an awareness of ambiguity but an unshakable need for certainty, most especially when that certainty is the most deadly thing on the planet. 

The Axial provides evidence for humans employing a new facility for tool-use, including language, which is, after all, also a tool, but hardly only a tool--it is a tool like no other: it is an environment: it is the substance and structure of thought itself: we swim in it and it swims in us. One assumes, in comparison to the animals, that the Axial allowed us to leave the pseudo-psychosis of one-to-one correlations and certainty behind, and embrace the inherent ambiguity of large symbol systems, which are not and never have been set and clear, except to the psychotic among us. I say this is no way to impugn the truly psychotic, who rarely participate in the genocidal-level, sociopathic, blood sport that I will attribute to what I am choosing to call the waking dead. And this is what this post is about.

I began this post saying that The Walking Dead details the various choices of Our Team, the dwindling and growing, waxing and waning, group of survivors clustered around Rick Grimes, who by season five, with his beard, has started to look like a hot cross between Jesus and God. There are other choices being detailed as well, in this employment of metaphor, and these, for the most part, do not involve Love. What we witness instead is the spectacle of humans going feral: humans in the wild, not just without civilization to keep them in check, but a demonstrable rejection of civilization. We are speaking of a different kind of discontent. Rather it is a new kind of contentment with savagery, with murder, cannibalism, and pleasure in these things. It is Schadenfreude articulated at the level of an ethos.

Over and over Our Team either comes across people or is come across by people who have made horrible choices--and Our Team has made HORRIBLE choices, too--but these others, the waking dead, only have it in for anyone else who crosses their path, in an Us Against Them, that must always and only end badly, must always end in Evil. Our Team actively resists this conclusion--and it is a conclusion, in every sense of the term--and we, as audience members, yell at the screen, "Kill them!" but they very rarely do. To us, the paranoia of the Zombie Apocalypse puts us more into the camp of the waking dead than Our Team. Their struggle with this question is the problem and the point.

Despite the blood and gore, which has become more intense, even personal, as the series progresses, despite the first two seasons during which the series explored what to do about the zombies--realizing that the zombies are not the text, are only occasionally the subtext of the show, but are the backdrop--the show is about the living, the living who choose to be dead, and the living who choose to not just not be the dead, but who choose to be the living. And for humans, choosing to be the living means always thinking, remembering to feel, and to build bonds based on Love not Death.

Now, the all or nothing, Us Against Them, every-man-for-himself, how-can-your-life-benefit-mine continuation of the destruction of the world of the others, of the waking dead--the very thing that Our Team exists as a site of resistance against, even with all their mistakes--is right-wing, Conservative politics, policies, and policing as we experience it today. It is the coldest, most frightening, death-loving machine the human race has yet produced. It produces the end of civilization and the end of the world without even seeming to believe in either of those things, which is terrifying. And the dreams which are narratives on our television screens and in our comic books--even more remarkable for having been produced by corporations, the great engines of our destruction and political destitution--offer both a critique and an alternative. Must we get to the place on display in The Walking Dead before can realize alternatives are possible?

Poetry/Jazz Appreciation Month II: Lilac Wine

Famously, there are at least two distinctly American art forms: the Broadway Musical and, of course, Jazz--I also include The Blues in this short, proud, list, and rock and roll, which is white Blues.

It is not an accident that Jazz derives from the Black experience on this continent and the Musical from a specifically Jewish-American genius, evolving out of operetta, vaudeville, and music hall nonsense into its own real thing. These two American art forms--Jazz and Broadway--revolve around each other, nourishing each other, making each other even better, more beautiful, more feeling, more sophisticated, more complex. For at least half a century, Broadway music was popular music in the United States, and Jazz ran and ran with it.

Then we have Nina Simone.

In the hands of a true genius--a real American genius, like Simone--a little Broadway ditty becomes a threnody, an In Memoriam: You; In Memoriam: Love; In Memoriam: Me. No one makes this song speak the way she does and no one else can pull Death, so certainly, out of it in this way.

And so we continue our exploration of Jazz Appreciation Month and National Poetry Month.

Lilac Wine
James Shelton

I lost myself on a cool damp night.
Gave myself in that misty light.
Was hypnotized by strange delight
Under a lilac tree.

I made wine from the lilac tree.
Put my heart in its recipe.
It makes me see what I want to see,
Be what I want to be.

When I think more than I want to think,
Do things I never should do,
I drink much more than I ought to drink,
Because it brings me back you.

Lilac wine
is sweet and heady,
Like my love.
Lilac wine,
I feel I'm steady,
like my love.

Listen to me.
I cannot see clearly.
Isn't that he,
coming to me,
nearly
here?

Lilac wine
is sweet
and heady.
Where's
my love?
Lilac wine,
I feel
I'm steady.
Where's my love?

Listen to me,
why is everything
so hazy?
Isn't that he,
or am I going
crazy, dear?

Lilac wine,
I feel
I'm ready
for my love.
Feel
I'm ready
for
my love.

Poetry/Jazz Appreciation Month I: How Long Has This Been Going On?

April isn't just the cruelest month but also National Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month. What more could we want to commemorate them than the Gershwins giving us a bit of both by way of the titanic Carmen McRae with "How Long Has This been Going On" (1928)? A strange song about being taken by surprise by one's own feelings of love--an amazing song! an amazing lyric! "Where have I been all these years?"

Lyrics aren't necessarily poetry, and yet they also are. And the Great American Songbook is full of, not just flashes, but full on lightning storms of brilliance. The idea of asking the beloved how long "this" has been going on is just mind-reeling. To me, anyway. Enjoy.

How Long Has This Been Going On?
George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin.

'Neath the stars, at bazaars
Often I've had to caress men.
Five or ten, dollars then,
I'd collect from all those yes-men.
Don't be sad, I must add,
that they meant no more than chess-men.

Darling, can't you see?
'Twas for charity?
Though these lips have made slips,
They were never really serious.
Who'd have thought, I'd be caught
In a state that's so delirious?

I could cry salty tears.
Where have I been all these years?
Listen you, tell me do:
How long has this been going on?

What a kick, how I buzz;
Boy, you click like no one does.
Listen sweet, I repeat:
How long has this been going on?

Dear, when in your arms I creep;
That divine rendezvous.
Don't wake me, if I'm asleep,
Let me dream that it's true.

Kiss me once, kiss me twice,
then once more:
That makes thrice.
Come on, and let's make it four.

What a break, for heaven's sake,
How long has this been going on?
What a break, for heaven's sake,
How long has this been going on?

Jesus is Coming: a few songs about an old friend

I take a very long time putting together song lists of this sort. I began with the idea that Easter is coming, and that Jesus is Love. And so, I proceed through songs that explicitly mention the Lord but also love songs, with all of Love's disappointments, excitements, false leads, re-routs, blind faith, and Faith. This list leads through reversals, achievements, passions, angers, understandings, misunderstandings, word-associations, and deeply-felt connections.

To love Jesus is its own love affair; and we would do a lot better than to stop denying that that is the case. It's a long story, and it deserves all the backtracking, backsliding, intuition, and insight that comes with any long relationship. This is a very personal, perverse, and real grouping of songs on a theme. I hope you are able to enjoy it and understand it. 

Jesus is just alright with me, as long as he looks just like you.

And Jesus was a sailor,

When he walked upon the water,

And he spent a long time watching

From a lonely wooden tower,

And when he knew for certain

Only drowning men could see him,

He said, all men shall be sailors then,

Until the sea shall free them,

But he, himself, was broken,

Long before the sky would open,

Forsaken, almost human,

He sank beneath your wisdom,

Like a stone.

On Watching "The Walking Dead"

A few years ago, my ex used to be annoyed at how the culture--its films, television, and narratives--had become overrun with vampires and zombies. I don't know what he thinks about it now, because I haven't asked him, but it seems clear that the futile fantasy of beauty, glamour, boredom, and power that is the undead vampire is on the wane (reality television, among other things) and zombies, the mindlessly persistent idea of us, as dead, as relentless consumers of everything, is ascendant--that and the sense of outlaw survivalism against the worst odds that we see in Sons of Anarchy, The Hunger Games, and Divergent, and, of course, The Walking Dead.

Our books, our comic books, our movies, and our television shows are our dreams, as a culture. Read them awake. Awaken.

On Enfranchisement; On Suffrage

enfranchise

verb

en·fran·chise \in-ˈfran-ˌchīz, en-\

Full Definition of ENFRANCHISE
transitive verb

1: to set free (as from slavery)

2: to endow with a franchise: as

a : to admit to the privileges of a citizen and especially to the right of suffrage

b : to admit (a municipality) to political privileges or rights

suffrage

noun
suf·frage \ˈsə-frij, sometimes -fə-rij\

Full Definition of SUFFRAGE
noun

1: a short intercessory prayer usually in a series

2: a vote given in deciding a controverted question or electing a person for an office or trust

3: the right of voting : franchise; also : the exercise of such right


I. On The Law, Marriageability, and The Supreme Court

This begins with a very long sentence, inclusive of serial digressions on the topic:

While I have never had any significant personal interest in getting married and--less topical but still significant--I am critical of the prized, exemplary status accorded marriage culturally, and even more so of the economic and legal advantages awarded by the State to any two adult individuals--formerly white, formerly of the same skin color, and now formerly of differently sexed bodies (is it not interesting how discriminatory animus, as the Law itself, shows its sad obsession with excluding specific bodies from its irregular protections and its unearned patronage in this neat, capsule history?)--who, whether foolish or wise, whether loaded and living it up and leaving it in Las Vegas or sober at St Patrick's, decide, for any reason or no reason, for love or money or loneliness or status or spite, to claim their right to this contract that we call an institution, I nonetheless have never found the curiously overwrought desire in The Law to segregate same-sex adults from this contract (without entertaining even the condescending lip-service of "separate but equal") to be credulous or even intelligible.

I am less perplexed by the impulse two people may have to enunciate a ritual declaration of union between them than I am by the State's longstanding preoccupation with singling out this dual relation for its imprimatur, while other relationships and other adults, paired but unmarried or--Heaven forfend!--single--nearly all by dint of birth not among the 1% that enjoys the wealth of the nation--are effectively punished for their willful failure, or their legal ineligibility, to submit to this contract. And thus this structure makes a demand of the institution, a demand whose call is heard no less by those able to heed it under The Law's latest grudging concession of whom it will accept as a person (even then only under certain conditions and in specific locations) and those still shunned by its embrace and ridiculed by its exceptional promise--a promise it guards jealously in its bosom, as a child does with a secret or rather an old toy, carefully withheld from play by the merest interest from another child.

The value of the Other Body does not derive from the ban placed on its marriageability, rather the Body in question--though unmarked by any outward sign of its intrinsic, alien difference, except, of course, the same difference displayed by nearly everyone: the supposedly unified, immutable sex of the body itself, now cleverly redeployed as the mark of difference, of Cain, by its proximity to another body displaying the same mark--is the very reason for its exclusion from the contract. The spatial dimension, and the arena of the social, are thus conscripted to render the familiar strange, and theorize the discovery of essential difference, of identity, in an otherwise undifferentiatable body. It is through this guilt by association, this conspiracy theory, that the Law discerns the identity that marks this unmarked body. And this is how, as Foucault memorably demonstrated, the action, the crime, the trajectory of the act defines the past and future of the body, becomes an identity, the crime becomes the body itself--becomes the Other Body--or as the Bible clarified so much earlier in the King James, the Strength of Sin is the Law. And in these latter days the struggle for civil rights has effectively removed much of the need for policing, because now we nominate ourselves for the State. The act is eclipsed by the name. And the Law is still catching up to what this means in regard to its strictures, prejudices, and punishments.

But the weakness of the Law in this case is that it is based on the notion of Sin. It is not Sin that determines the Law, and despite the important genealogical relationship between Commandments and Religious Laws and the field of American Law, they in fact are not coextensive, rather they take a very different interest in a series of similar topics and dilemmas. And though under Religion these topics do not represent dilemmas, under the Law, they must.

But let us return to the question of the problematic, intractable, ungovernable Other Body that even though the Law has spent centuries trying to define, detect, dissect, and force into submission, this Other Body keeps slipping away, as the Law realizes and re-realizes that it has never had ethical ground to stand upon in the first place in this matter. The Law of Desire is not subject to the Law of Man. And despite the paucity of reference in history books it is surely as old as the oldest profession, which is not prostitution as the romantics would have us believe, but the profession of love.


II. On Intercession, The Marketplace, Voting Rights, Racism, and The Law

As a kind of late introduction, I should mention that I had always written the first part of this post--which is a repost-of-a-post--as a commentary on the nearly simultaneous release of two Supreme Court rulings, not one: the grudging concession to the unconstitutional status of parts of the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" (DOMA) and the chronologically precedent evisceration--a much more important and far-reaching and enormously damaging ruling--of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The second always drained any pleasure from the first. I don't care a fig for same-sex marriage when the same week thousands of people are declared second-class citizens, unworthy of the right to vote in racist Southern states, and other places--places put on permanent watch for good reason, as they have shown in this aftermath! As soon as the 1965 law was declared obsolete and unnecessary, the very states in question pursued the exact actions prohibited by the law under which they were formerly bound. This is repugnant and embarrassing to the extreme for all Americans. I feel that today, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches in protest for the right to vote, it is only appropriate that I finally finish this post.

We are watching the fascinating conflict among, and intersection of, a series of Higher Court edicts, Legislative/Executive workarounds, Late Capitalist imperatives, animus-based Religious intractabilities, States vs Federal Rights issues, dilemmas of the Franchise, and Republican-Democratic open questions (not the political parties, I speak here of principles of democratically-elected representatives of a republic: "...and to the Republic for which it stands....") simultaneously coming home to roost. Where will it lead?

Let us begin with a certain kind of franchise, which is the only one anyone seems to care about, which is the business franchise, which allows us to sell to anyone, no matter how depraved they are. This is the foundation of Arizona's gubernatorial veto, which recognized the tacit and provisional LGBTQO "community" as a realistic, even necessary, factor in the marketplace. Yet why is the ability of same-sex couples to marry such a powerful factor in the marketplace of ideas and cash, when the ability of so-called "minority" bodies to participate in the electoral process is not equally or more powerful? I am baffled by this inconsistency. Are gay bodies white and not black? Are gay bodies monied and black bodies negligible? What moronic calculus accounts for this... this unspeakable idiocy? Under what jaundiced optic of The Law are black bodies allowed to marry but not to vote?--an optic that includes one's neighborhood and income bracket?

I realize now why I have taken so long to write about this: it is because my language fails before this pathetic Racism. It is Racism on its face; and The Law should hang its head in shame before this monstrous abdication of its essential role--its protection of fairness--in our society. And let all of you who say there is no Racism in American culture incline your heads in shame as well.

I'll write more later when I've cooled off.