THE BEST DECADE I HAVE SEEN

29 August 2014

Having lived in parts of three half-centuries and 8 decades, I believe I am qualified to comment on this topic. Of the decades through which I have lived (starting with the '40s), the best (by far) was the 1950s. No other decade compares.

Don't get me wrong, there was a lot wrong with the '50s. Basically, everybody smoked, drinking to excess was widely accepted - as was drinking and driving, food quality in supermarkets was actually at a low ebb during that decade. There was a fascination with science and technology, and canned and processed foods, many with virtually all nutritional components removed, were staples of the diet. Previously unknown metabolic diseases were on the increase. Above-ground atomic testing was still going on, poisoning the air and soil. Worse still, racism and xenophobia abounded, and no less than 10% of GDP, possibly much more, was "100% wasted" on "anti-communism" (a problem which the communists themselves corrected by creating social and political structures that imploded). Paranoia was pervasive, and social and political norms were incredibly narrow.

That said, essentially all the problems I just listed started getting better in the 1950s. It was the key decade, above all others, in which the middle class prospered. Increasingly liberal social policies worked, because the group of socially disadvantaged persons was small enough that a modest diversion of funds and efforts could genuinely help them. The poor gradually began to move into the burgeoning middle classes. Antibiotics and vaccines came to be widely used, creating a revolution in public health. And doctors still made house calls. There were no class action lawsuits, drug abuse existed only at the fringes of society, and people thought that new technologies and new products were "good." We even initiated the space race in the 50s, and Chuck Yeager had already broken the sound barrier (that was in 1947 --- I remember sonic booms throughout my childhood).

While many of the problems of the '50s have been corrected today, the great majority of its advantages have been lost, foremost among them, the dominance and prosperity of the middle class, and with it, the conviction that advances in society and science were going to keep making life better. While we no longer waste taxpayer dollars on military adventures against communism, our efforts to oppose Middle East dictators (and renewed Russian expansionism, of all things) are equally counterproductive and ill-advised. It's the Chinese who are going to "beat" us anyway, and they are presently doing more things "right" than we are, so I can't really say I'm against them... though my preference would certainly be for us to do better, as our society is freer and more tolerant than theirs.

I remain optimistic at heart. I am always thinking about how things can be better, and the range of our opportunities remains unimaginable. But we are presently mired in ideological straitjackets that no longer match our present reality, a very large proportion of our taxpayer dollars are invested in counterproductive ventures that are more likely to bring pain and further social disintegration than satisfaction, and we have new social problems that make those of the '50s look infinitesimal by comparison. We are quibbling over the small stuff, and failing to invest in and plan for "the big stuff."

Technologies that have the potential to resolve most of our present problems (robotics, nuclear fusion, space habitation, biotechnology and many more) await us on the horizon, but we aren't even going that direction. In an effort to please everybody, our elected leaders are investing in old ideas that don't work, accumulating debts that cannot be repaid, and laying the foundations for increased social and economic disorder in the future.

I guess I'm just arguing that it's time to think smarter and make the hard decisions. Why do I believe we can? Because that's exactly what we did in the '50s. Let's start by believing that new ideas (not just old ones) can actually make things better. That in itself should be enough to turn the tide.

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An Essay on Retribalization in the Post-Subsistence Age

15 May 2007 (reposted 14 July 2013)

It has now been many decades since Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian apostle of television-based social change, postulated, among other things, that the “cool” electronic media – at that time represented primarily by television – were exerting a “retribalizing” influence upon post-industrial civil society.


McLuhan’s ideas are complex and often vague, and he addressed issues of far-reaching cultural significance. Additionally, several decades have passed, and the internet has replaced television as the “cool” electronic medium of our era. Nonetheless, broad culturally-related behavioural changes seem to be evident in our population at large, and it may be worthwhile to consider whether the concept of retribalization sheds some light on how our world is changing.

Let us begin by laying down some fundamental concepts. Modern humans have walked the planet for a scant 200,000 years, and during almost all of that period, our forebears lived a tribal and subsistence-based way of life. About 5000 years ago, the development of agricultural technology enabled the first gathering of peoples into cities, and this era is generally referred to as the rise of civilization, though I prefer the term civil culture, which refers to the cultural developments that occur when humans engage in a trade-based lifestyle in urban centres.

With the rise of civil culture, the influence of tribal culture diminished, and this was particularly true during the interlinked historical eras of imperialism and industrialization.

Until recently, individuals inhabiting civil cultures regarded themselves as unquestionably superior to individuals living within tribal cultures.

A jolting reminder of this smug worldview was afforded me this week when I watched the 51-year-old John Wayne movie, The Searchers – truly a movie classic (though now strikingly dated) and the original inspiration for Jonathan Lethem's novel, Girl in Landscape, about which I have blogged earlier.

In a “making of” featurette, Natalie Wood conversed with the self-confident narrator, and the two broached the topic of cultural contrasts while discussing the role of the indigenous Navajo people in the making of the film. Without blinking an eye, the two conversants suggested that the Navajo had historically lived a “savage” lifestyle, but had now abandoned this way of life for a peaceful and subsistence-based, and thus still “primitive,” lifestyle.

I could say much more, but what most struck me about this self-satisfied synopsis of recent history from the vantage point of 1956 is the fact that, in my view, the greater change over the subsequent 50 years has not been the continued “advance” of the indigenous peoples (in this case the Navajo), but in fact the retribalization of the dominant culture – and I think that this is an outcome that neither the narrator nor Ms. Wood ever envisioned.

In both the historical and anthropological contexts, we tend to think of tribal lifestyles solely in terms of subsistence, and for the most part, the age of subsistence has passed, at least in the northern hemisphere.

How then can our society have retribalized over the past 50 years?

Interestingly, if Mr. McLuhan is correct, even the making of films, such as The Searchers, might in fact play a role in this process – and this further compounds the irony of my initial observation.

In brief, Mr. McLuhan held that tribal culture is characterized by ways of life based on interpersonal speech, story-telling, participatory processes, integrating and decentralized social structures, mythic views of the world, village-based lifestyles, and – in particular – tribal identities.

In contrast, the subsequent “mechanical age” was characterized by hierarchical structures, top-down communication, and rule-governed social behavioural structures, creating a way of life that was individualistic, fragmented, nationalistic, centralized, specialized and urbanized.

Perhaps the height of civil culture is represented in the rise of the British Empire in the 19th century. In addition to national pride, this era was characterized by clearly-defined and often exacting social rules and structures, highly-refined and universally-valued basic skill sets (here I would focus in particular on the primacy of literacy and literate communication), and a clearly-delineated and consensually accepted worldview as to the nature of individual and social progress based on rationality and technological mastery of the environment.

How far we have come in our modern era from the consensual views and hierarchically-structured norms of the Victorian Age.

Many of us who are products of the age of text-based literacy have lamented the breathtaking decline in universal literacy that quite clearly characterizes our current era. One need only spend an afternoon in the attic with the correspondence of one's grandparents to observe that literacy in particular has crumbled in response to the onslaught of the age of electronic media.

And this simple observation gives rise to the instinct of curiosity as to what else might be taking place....

If McLuhan is correct, that electronic media reshape our personal and cultural identities, then we have a starting point for thinking about the disorienting global and cultural crosscurrents that typify our fragmented era.

At this point, I would like to present further – though admittedly inchoate evidence – that a very fundamental and correspondingly radical process of change is afoot.Picasso represented these changes in his introduction of cubism into the world of visual art, and as an exhibit, I present his classic work (a replica of which took its insistent place on the walls of our family’s summer cabin on the James River of Missouri during my childhood), Les Demoiselles D’Avignon.


The shattered perspectives in Picasso’s paintings offer evidence that our ability to perceive the world has somehow become radically disunified, and in an obviously disturbing way. Picasso’s best-known work, Guernica, certainly illustrates this point more profoundly still.
The literary works of the existentialists, emerging in the 19th and early 20th centuries, anticipated similar developments. Here I am thinking of such writers as Sartre, Camus and Dostoevsky, whose novels consumed my attention and interest during my high school years. One cannot read such works without the sense that our personal certainties have become profoundly disrupted by the incomprehensible diversity and disorder of broad human experience.

Ivan Illich, with whom I was fortunate enough to have been invited to spend a weekend almost two decades ago, argued that we should consider returning to a new kind of “subsistence” lifestyle, for the sake not of our economic survival, but of our survival as human beings capable of relationship and collaboration. Illich also shared McLuhan's interest in the human transition from reliance upon oral communication to text-based communication – and beyond that, to electronically-mediated communication (see: ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind (1988) ISBN 0-86547-291-2).
Can we not easily contrast the profoundly intricate literary accomplishments of Shakespeare with the primitive linguistic formulations that characterize the great mass of entries on blogspot.com, the virtual space that you as my reader and I as the writer of this essay inhabit at the very moment of your reading of this text?

My grandmother told me stories of neighbourly visiting in her early and mid-adult life. Social visiting was highly formalized, and greeting cards – which she collected and shared with me – were exchanged.

Can anyone argue that tribal warfare remains a force against which our sophisticated and technologized military interventions are virtually useless – or that tribalism has unmade the US adventure in Iraq and is rending much of Africa, the Middle East and South Asia as well?

I pass most of the hours of most of my days in conversations with the Ojibway and Cree people of Northwest Ontario. In most cases, the near-ancestors of these individuals lived a classic tribal lifestyle, and a smaller number of my aboriginal clients have been able to describe to me their experiences of subsistence during their own early years, characterized by living in tents, camping at and walking traplines with their parents, and being raised by their extended family as a “non-nuclear” family unit.

I close here following the above potpourri of examples, because I trust that you can afford your own. And I also wish to reflect on what I have learned and observed through my discussions with individuals whose way of life often continues to express the legacy of many millennia of tribal culture.

My work has caused me to become interested in how tribal people think and behave both similarly to and differently than people with European ancestry, and I have grown increasingly curious as to the factors that characterize the thinking of the individuals who have so kindly shared many of their most personal experiences with me.

Please permit me to summarize briefly a few of my observations

For many of my clients, the self is very much a shared as opposed to an individual reality. How others are impacted by every thought and action is not merely an incidental, but a primary concern. This is an example of the workings of a tribally-acquired identity.

Further, the events of the immediate moment and of the present day very often overshadow concerns as to future expectations, aspirations and consequences. This is not a reflection of anomie or of goallessness – far from it – but of the primacy of immediate circumstances, and of one’s high regard for the importance and needs of one’s present companions.

I believe also that for the tribal person, emotional reality tends to supersede the “rational” worldview. "Sense" is not a construct of logical induction or deduction, but of the interplay of the changing and competing emotional realities of those with whom one is engaged in relationship.

The above are meant to be only a few examples, true to Montaigne's spirit in his penning of his original essays as first “attempts” at the formulation of new ideas through their presentation to others in the form of brief texts.

Let me close by clarifying that I do not regard myself as a tribal individual. I am very much a product of the age of literacy and formalism. But I do perceive that I am surrounded by a retribalizing society and I do not denigrate it – rather I seek to understand it.

Many of the modalities of living that typify the world in which I was raised are literally evaporating before my eyes, and I wish to understand how and why that is occurring, and what it means. The concept of retribalization in the post-industrial era seems to me to be the key to reaching that understanding, though I am only in the early stages of doing so.

Let me close by urging the reader to take some time to watch the classic movie, The Searchers, and don't skip the “making-of” featurettes.

Consider the irony that as Ms. Wood and the narrator converse easily from a perspective of their own presumed superiority, their children and their children’s children have probably become much more similar to the tribal people whom they clearly regarded – only 50 years ago – as less-advanced than themselves.

The children and the grandchildren of the worthy Navajo people who aided in making the film have probably changed much less than have the descendants of the film-makers.

It seems to me that it is now the indigenous peoples of the world who must teach most of the rest of us about how to be tribal, rather than we who must teach them about how to be “civilized.”

It is perhaps only those who still remember the tribal ways who possess the capacity to lead us along the path that we are now following. Further, and perhaps radically, I suspect that human survival itself may depend upon the formation and nurturing of such seemingly inverted teaching and learning relationships.
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Piaf by Cotillard: An Insight into Deep Learning

16 October 2011

I have just finished a run-through of "La Vie En Rose," the filmed biographical portrayal of Edith Piaf, as performed by Marion Cotillard.

In brief, Ms. Piaf's short life was not at all a happy one, though it was long on adventure, discovery, improbable twists and creativity.

The French love this film, which despite being created in the French Language, saw Ms. Cotillard win the 2007 Best Actress Academy Award for her performance. (She bested Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth, among others.)

My comment here is brief. What fascinated me is how Ms. Cotillard studied for her leading role in the film. She spent many hours reviewing historical information and documentary footage concerning Ms. Piaf.

However, she emphasizes that she never attempted to imitate Ms. Piaf's voice, gestures or mannerisms. Rather, she immersed herself in understanding who Ms. Piaf was....

The consequence? Critic after critic remarked that she had captured the very spirit of Edith Piaf.

The immediate lesson? Comprehension trumps imitation.

Once having seen it, you will not be able to forget this film. It burrows into deep places, and thus lingers afterwards.

The broader life lesson?

Don't plan a life based on "what" or "how" you want your life to be. Focus on who you want to be. The rest will follow.
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Atlas Shrugged: The Movie Is Worth Seeing Despite Its Obvious Failures

15 April 2011

OK. Just caught the premiere of Atlas Shrugged: Part I this evening. I read the book in high school (at which time it was still fairly new - it was published in 1957). The movie is only on 200 screens.

In my view, Ayn Rand, the controversial and celebrated author, was not a great novelist. She used the form of the novel to express ideas about her personal philosophy ("objectivism") that had been formed by her personal survival of Russian collectivism and a genocide twice the scale of Hitler's. This woman definitely has something to say. As to the film, I was most struck by the conflicting and deeply compromised premises at its core.

Rather than seeing the film set in historical context, we find that it opens in the year 2016. Gas is $36 a gallon, everybody is unemployed, and evil politicians scheme to loot the last few of the country's wealthy and successful people.

Sound like Russia? You've got it. And we are also taken back to the original story of railroading, iron, steel and coal – and ballroom cocktail receptions. That is quite a disconnect, and at least for me, I couldn't set the railroad story in our present decade.

There are other problems. I was bugged by the characters' inability to construct grammatical sentences (“we/us,” “is/are,” basic stuff). The dialogue itself was probably taken from the book, but honestly, that is not an inspired source. Rand's characters can speak for 50 pages without taking a breath. So a lot of the pieces of the story didn't work together.

I also have the impression that the screenwriters (John Aglialoro and Brian Patrick O'Toole) don't know much about modern business. For example, and most tellingly, they stayed with Rand's notion that individuals would be outlawed from owning more than one company.

Hey, individuals don't own any major companies anymore – and don't want to! Everything has been floated on the market to exploit shareholders! Why do it yourself, when you can suck the shareholders dry?

This problem is in fact one of the contemporary manifestations of exactly the problem that Ms. Rand was trying to illustrate from the middle of another century.

That is, the evils of our age are different than those of the mid-20th century. So if we're going to set this story in 2016, then let's see the collective thinkers mired in political correctness and tortured compromises, trying to rescue the economy by destroying the currency. Hey! That is actually happening – and it would make the same point in a contemporary setting, as I think the screenwriters intended.

So, at least for me, this WAS still worth watching. I guess the producers didn't have much money or time. I understand. This is not a big budget film, and that's OK. Give them a break.

I think what everyone involved in this shoestring effort was trying to get across is that individual initiative is the only thing that can save us (as opposed, say, to organizing various factions into groups and going at each others' throats – as seems to occur on Fox News nightly!).

So yes, this film is trying to be about courageous people believing in something and doing it, not unlike trying to produce this film with no money! Good for them. It's probably still the right answer.... I commend them for trying!
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Attaining

14 August 2010

Recently I've been meditating as to who is the most important of all jazz musicians.

A few weeks ago, I would have identified Mingus for all-around genius. Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting is a layered performance that can be continuously revisited, and still not exhausted.

However, recently I've been listening to John Coltrane's "Attaining" on Sun Ship.

Wow! It's a hard call. Mingus was consistently brilliant in his work, but Coltrane was versatile. Perhaps it is a limit of the structure of our human minds that causes us to ask such questions, which are perhaps pointless.

All I can say is, for a Friday night, Attaining by John Coltrane can take you places that few other pieces of music can possibly do.

Mingus. Coltrane. Genius.

There are more, many more of them. Our world is a better place for the creators!

Thank you.
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Mingus - Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting

17 May 2010

Life is short. Or maybe not. It depends in fact on your perspective and personal take on the question. But life does not continue forever.

What must we do?

Certainly every day we must do something we love.

What did Charles Mingus love? Well, I'm not aware of the entire scope of his passions, but the man certainly loved making music.

Throughout my life, I've often heard Mingus' music mentioned by others, most notably, perhaps, because Joni Mitchell referred to him as "mellow, fantastic," and recorded an album with him. As it happens, I didn't listen to that particular album by Joni Mitchell. Nor did I listen to Mingus' music until recently.

What have I learned?

We have to stretch and try new things to discover the the further reaches of our individual and collective souls.

After all these years, I have just discovered Mingus' Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, recorded on his Warner Jazz (Atlantic) album, Blues and Roots. (As I listen more, I am inclined to recommend the "alternate take," into which Mingus and his companions invested just a little more swing....)

Wow!

Now I understand why Mingus' music has interested people over all these years. Using the complex and multi-perspectived tools of tone, timing and rhythm, Mingus calls to mind an old-time prayer meeting while at the same time exploring the boundaries of what it is possible to do with improvisation and experimentation in music. It works - dramatically well.

At this moment in time, I cannot listen to Mingus' Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting without being entranced - captured by Mingus' musical erudition and bravado. What a masterwork! What pleasure for those who are open to Mingus' tonal experimentation!

Mingus has opened a new world to me - one that is just a little bit broader and more majestic than the world I previously inhabited. That is entirely satisfactory - for now.

In order to stay open, of course, I must continue to explore and experiment, as did Mr. Mingus himself.

But for this week, I can only counsel the reader. Listen to Mingus. Open your ears. Widen your mind. Expand your world.

You will not be disappointed.

Aaron Cohen's critical review follows:

"Bassist Charles Mingus was always ready for a good fight. In the liner notes to this disc, Mingus says he wanted to respond to critics who said he didn't swing enough. And reply he did. Mingus gave whoever these absurd quibblers were some of the most ecstatic blues ("Moanin'" and "Cryin Blues"), gospel ("Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting") and Dixieland ("My Jelly Roll Soul") the jazz world has ever heard. Along with his striking original compositions, the instrumental combination in Mingus's nonet remains unconventional: the frontline included four saxophonists and two trombonists without the counterweight of a trumpeter. The leader's sliding octave bass lines and percussive slaps are totally rollicking, and the wild abandon in the group's playing is irrepressible."
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Background Music

20 August 2009

I play background music all day when I'm at my office. I do so as well on the rarer occasions when I have a little time to relax at home in the evenings.

The secret of background music is that it has to be interesting and agreeable, but unobtrusive. Thus, heavily orchestrated arrangements don't work well.

Here are a few examples of CDs that I have found to constitute enjoyable background listening:

My present favourite is Sol Gabetta's Il Progetto Vivaldi, gorgeous, rich, complex, unobtrusive and in fact perfect cello. I am so entranced by Gabetta's graceful performances that I literally can't stop playing this particular CD.

Alexander Paley's refined and subtle interpretation of Bach's Goldberg Variations are a delight to the ear.

I am also enjoying the Ornette Coleman Trio, "At the 'Golden Circle' Stockholm."

Consider as well Newsound's two-disc Charlie Parker collection (image unavailable).

For those of you who have listened only to R. Carlos Nakai, try Kyle Councillor's "Livin the Good Life" for traditional North American Aboriginal flute music, one of my great favourites.

John Coltrane's Giant Steps is one of the greatest of all jazz classics, and unobtrusive enough to serve as auditory context for a mellow day.

And Blue Trane is also a great backgrounder.

On a classical note, try the Orford String Quartet's "Mozart String Quartets."

For classical Spanish guitar, "The Legendary Segovia" cannot be faulted.

Julian Bream's "Music of Spain" provides perfect melodies and rhythms when used to add context to almost any worthy activity.

From the classic jazz page, consider Brubeck's milestone recording, "Time Out" for some adventures in time - that is, adventures with variable time signatures.... "Take Five" was the first jazz instrumental to sell a million copies. ("Time Further Out" is also worth taking a look at.)

One of my perennial favourites, and one of the first albums I ever owned, is Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain. It's easy to listen to, and I particularly like this one late at night.

Now I'm going to get into some picks that may or may not work for you as background music, depending on the circumstances. But I consider all of these too interesting not to mention. Only this summer, we visited the Big Jonathan Centre of the Selkirk (Northern Tutchone) Nation in the Yukon, where Jerry Alfred is an elder. His recordings are featured at Big Jonathan House. I've been listening to Mr. Alfred's music for years - a combination of traditional and contemporary elements. It is haunting and hypnotic. Try Etsi Shon (Grandfather Songs) as an introduction.

While we're talking about old favourites, try Skeleton Woman, inspired by the writings of Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Another of Susan's and my great favourites, usually played during the Christmas season, is James Galway's "Winter's Crossing," telling the tale in music of the men and women who crossed by sea from Northern Ireland to North America. Caution, these compositions are haunting, magical and spiritually dense.

And while we're talking dense, magical and complex, consider Oliver Schroer's brilliant, dissonant violin renderings recorded in Spanish cathedrals during the artist's pilgrimage through Spain.

And as we wander further afield, please direct your attention to Robert Johnson's original 1936 and 1937 recordings, completed shortly before his untimely death. Johnson is arguably the most important of all Delta blues musicians and composers. His music is raw, intricate, haunting, at times disturbing, and ultimately deeply engaging. Note that there were no "studios" at the time these classic compositions were committed to wax. This music works best for me after the sun has set.

My final pick will serve as background music only in certain circumstances. The disc features considerable variation in dynamic range, style, taste and genre. But combined, these selections are magical. Literally intended for Valentine celebrations, this two-disc set is from Deutsche Grammophon: "Be My Valentine: Music for Two."

Let me re-emphasize that the earlier picks are suitable for background listening in many situations. Obviously many more in this genre could have been selected.

The later picks are for various reasons more specialized or idiosyncratic. What all of the above have in common is that they have proven themselves to be enduring favourites in my music library.

And for those who need to know, I do not own an MP3 player. These are CDs!
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