“bike ride”

the mourning dove gives morning
its first rain-perfumed breath.

what specter on the log
erect
its gaze steady with hunger
lifts to launch
in the potent half-dawn?

it draws all woodland eyes and ears
(the slow, smooth arc with thunderous flaps
echoes in the awestruck twitter
of chickadee and sleepy squirrel)

and i
the impostor
slip in
under this noisy distraction
and bend an ear to the still-yet-moving
self-fulfilling truth of nature
while the goose-trail on the stream blinks on and off and on.

“whose soft skirt“

there it was, but whose:
a form left wrapped in paper, left
to dusty grace, time’s loom,
the steady sag from each
redoubling circadian; wrapped
and beat over the doorstep. whose soft skirt:
dust of a hundred years, two lives,
six lovers, and an age’s creasing
a fixéd, bodied soul’s releasing
a heart that faltered
and steadier shoes
that flapped beyond the jamb.

the floor was cold in morning
when ghosts took up their residence
in curtains
and the folds that hide in air

Well, these arguments are the two poles of my apologetics. Hemingway and Public Enemy are excuse enough not to write until the words are so true that they just come pouring out. And Kerouac makes me want to write even when I’ve got nothing to say. Right now I’m making excuses – how could I have written about Spain? It’s such a blur, so confused; I would make a mess with my grasping interpretations. So I didn’t.

In any case, I’m nearly half done here, so it’s time to allow my plans for the future to coalesce on the horizon. And my writing’s a part of that. What will I have to write about when I go to work for a large corporation in the middle of the rust belt?

Well, maybe just that. In high school I was an unlikely candidate to go to engineering school, to work for a big company. Many people think I still am. But I’m convinced that the job is very much in line with my personal goals. And as an overly kind friend put it, “Better you in that position than someone without your progressive perspective.”

So I have the opportunity to bring my critical mind into the realm of corporate monotony and get inside the machine that produces injustice. And this is a source for material.

Right now I’m reading an introduction to my new company’s compliance policies. Some quotes are hinting at topics I’d like to explore during my time there.

“Virtually all of our…policies are based on government laws and regulations.”

Let’s call my company Standard Technology. All major companies should have baseline policies that apply when government regulations are not strict enough. For instance, ST should not hire 12-year-olds to work at their Indonesian factory, even if the local government would allow it.

Standard Tech likes to announce itself as a socially responsible and environmentally progressive company. So why aren’t they going beyond legal regulations in their self-policing?

“Improper payments should not be confused with reasonable and limited expenditures for gifts, business entertainment and customer travel and living expenses directly related to the promotion of products or services or the execution of a contract.”

The top of our economic pyramid lives in a dreamworld. Pleasure is manifold, and costs drift off and dissipate like bubbles in a champagne glass. When does this go too far? When does it the “productivity boost” become a myth? Is there a culture of decadence?

Even the trees are mostly transitional. More than three quarters of the mass it accrues in its lifetime is shed in less than a year. The trunk is only the channel, the highway, for this overflowing fountain of broadly bifurcated green lifestuff.

We are vessels at the center, and truth flows through us. We may try to bolster our permanence, but in vain. It is not us, but the things we shed, that define us.

Militaristic beats still pound in my brain. Lifeless but potent cadences conduct my midnight stroll: through filthy streets, among ignoble beggars. I cannot help but think of a post-industrial wasteland. To a suburban visitor, late-night Detroit feels like London in 28 Days Later – abandoned, trashed, dripping with threat.

Something otherworldly floats toward us, stirring me from my reverie. A message in neon over the city’s most elaborately graffitied facade:

At first I cannot believe my eyes. It seems like something out of a dream. But my friend assures me – this sign is here every day. Beggar and businessman alike endure this mockery each day as they wander through a ruined city.

This experience was my first exposure to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. The sign’s message stuck with me as I grew closer to the city. As I came to understand that in many ways, the city was thriving, that whispers of “Detroit is coming back” are heard downtown and throughout suburbia, I let myself feel fortified by the installation’s empty promise. Of course I knew that “Everything” would not be alright. But I welcomed this note of optimism in a city as downtrodden as Detroit.

Three weeks ago, a new sign went up. Martin Creed’s piece was replaced by a new one by Sislej Xhafa, identical in medium, changing only one word. “NOTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT” now fiercely burns over Woodward. It’s a painful switch for anyone who liked the last sign – its disillusionment is so profound that it recasts Creed’s piece as sarcasm, or worse: the hollow promise of a politician, the empty coos of an indulgent parent.

With some mental acrobatics, one can rework the meaning of these signs. A recent post by a MOCAD employee on the Discuss Detroit forums gives some insight into this approach:

The sign is an integral part of the current exhibit “Business as Usual,” because it offers an anti-materialist sentiment expressed in the idea that we can survive on very little, even “nothing,” in a consumerist sense. For creative people, like the thousands in Detroit creating urban agricultural environments (for example), this may be taken as a reflection on living on a lot less than the “average consumer,” and still not only surviving but thriving. This city is, in fact, full of many people who find inspiration in looking beyond the perceived decay of the city and finding beauty in its regeneration. (http://metrotimes.com/arts/sto ry.asp?id=13268)

While it is not our intention to ignore the negative interpretations of its semantic meaning, because after all, it is a bold sentence on the facade of our building, we don’t want to ignore the more positive and thought-provoking potential that the sign possesses.

So with some clever semantics, you can rework the sign. “Nothing” is going to be alright – sure, the economy is collapsing, but we don’t need much, we’ll get by. Everything is going to be “alright” – just alright, nothing more.

But public art ought to be taken at face value, the way most Detroiters will see it. It’s tough to say how everyone will react, and part of the piece is obviously the discussion that it will inspire. To some, the last sign was mockery, and this one is a challenge. To others, even if only secretly, “Everything” was a comfort, and “Nothing” nags, to be endured.

I will say that the “Business as Usual” exhibit is fascinating, and ought to be explored before the sign is judged. I applaud MOCAD for having the guts to challenge the city with Xhafa’s piece.

Here’s some more of the MOCAD employee’s post, which was also quite interesting:

One of the most important things to note is that neither this sign, nor Martin Creed’s Everything is going to be alright were created as or intended to be a message by MOCAD (or the artists, for that matter) to the city of Detroit. In fact, these are traveling works of art that have been exhibited all over the world. (http://www.martincreed.com/wor ks/index.html) Xhafa, like many other artists, uses his work to respond not only to social issues, but also to the work of other artists. In Rome (above the Belgian [Xhafa] and British [Creed] Academies in 2003), the two pieces were installed simultaneously, but in different locations. Here in Detroit, the opposite is true: they are installed in the same location, but in temporal sequence. This change means that the viewer’s memory of the earlier installation becomes a crucial element of the work.

Be sure to stop in, public tours are Wednesdays at 1pm, Saturdays at 1 pm and 4 pm and Sundays at noon!

“A commuter line over track used by Amtrak would connect Ann Arbor with Detroit’s New Center, with a potential trial run beginning in 2010.”

Of course, it has to be the year I graduate…

One of the few exceptions to this rule was Ken Cockrel, Jr., then the president of the City Council. When his chief of staff, John Clark, was embroiled in a sewage sludge payoff that led to an FBI probe, my boss was shocked that the Cockrel office would have anything to do with such a scandal, clear though it was that Cockrel had had nothing to do with the actual bribe.

Much of Ken Cockrel, Jr’s reputation in the city draws from the legacy of his father. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ken Cockrel, Sr. was known not only as an unapologetic Marxist and a revolutionary leader in groups such as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, but also as one of the city’s most tireless, eloquent, and successful lawyers. He did not shrink from anyone in his indictment of the city’s brutal social hierarchies and de facto racial discrimination. Furthermore, he sought justice artfully and professionally.

Ken Cockrel, Sr.

In the 1969 New Bethel trials, Cockrel defended the accused murderers of two Detroit police officers who raided a meeting of the black nationalist group Republic of New Africa. In the first of these trials, Cockrel demonstrated that the police officers had incited riots at the meeting and secured the acquittal of Alfred Hibbett – but not before being charged with contempt for calling Judge Joseph Maher a “racist monkey, a honky dog, a racist pirate, and a bandit” under his breath. Cockrel turned the contempt case to his significant advantage, rallying area linguists and etymologists “to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Judge Joseph Maher is a criminal, a racist, a bandit and a thief.” His thorough and rigorous research was supported by massive rallies of support from black and white revolutionary organizations, and he handily won the trial.

In the second New Bethel trial, Cockrel defended two notoriously radical Black Nationalists, Raphael Viera and Clarence Fuller, who were also accused of shooting the two police officers. Disappointed by the homogeneously white jury, Cockrel began researching the jury selection process, and found that juror candidates had been turned away for reasons as trivial as having a beard, wearing miniskirts, chewing gum, or being on welfare. His report detailed 834 cases of unconstitutional exclusion and led to a new, largely black jury for the New Bethel trial as well as a thorough renewal of jury selection procedure in the city.

Ken Cockrel’s next major trial, the Johnson trial of 1971, is even more notorious. James Johnson Jr. had just been suspended from his job at a cramped, dangerous Chrysler plant when he shot and killed foreman Hugh Jones. As Johnson’s defense lawyer, Cockrel successfully argued that the plant’s inhumane working conditions had driven the worker to insanity.

Cockrel went on to serve as a City Councilman for many years before his death in 1989. His reputation was sterling – he is one of the stars of Detroit’s history.

So I wonder about many people’s effusive support of Ken Cockrel, Jr. as he replaces Kwame Kilpatrick as interim mayor of Detroit. I wonder whether the city’s faith may be blinded by the memory of his father. In 1997, Cockrel was the youngest City Council member in history; in my opinion, he still needs to prove himself.

But he seems focused on the base of the city, and is known for his regular meetings with community groups about small neighborhood issues. His Friendly Neighbor Program, which helps connect first-time home buyers with city-owned property in need of repair, is an excellent idea. And the video from his swearing-in is encouraging. Although I don’t know how I feel about the Star Trek and Terminator references at the end, I love hearing him kick off his swearing-in speech with talk of green jobs for Detroit.

So I’m very excited to see the city moving past Kwame. And I’m excited about Cockrel’s first move, the appointment of Saul Green to the post of deputy mayor. Saul Green is a University of Michigan law professor, the former president of the UM alumni association, a former U.S. attorney, and the 2007 Michigan Attorney of the year. Cockrel’s first job for Professor Green? Corruption in the police department. That’s a classy move, one his father might have made. I look forward to seeing what Ken Cockrel can bring to the city, and hope he can take the 2009 election after his first year as interim mayor.

My second Jazz Til Noon broadcast starts with an hour of rinky-dink big-band jazz and swing from the 20s and 30s.

Cab Calloway

Benny Goodman

I found some gold in the vaults – one great album, “Laughin In Rhythm,” contains a track called “Chinese Rhythm” that teaches the listener to speak Mandarin through scat, as well as a Jelly Roll Morton number called “Hyena Stomp” that sets a typically corny big band arrangement behind some chilling, maniacal laughter.

The next two hours follow with Jack Kerouac’s “History of Bop” set to a Charlie Parker suite, the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s genre-defining freejazz-funk hit “Theme De Yoyo,” and three tracks from Detroit free-jazz legend Faruq Z. Bey.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A9VYINOK

Four pieces are contained in this Naxos release: his Symphony No. 3, composed between 1988 and 1995; his most well-known work, Threnody (For the Victims Of Hiroshima), originally entitled 8’37″ in reference to the duration of the titular attack; Fluorescences; and De Natura Sonoris 2, which was featured in “The Shining”.

Download

More about the pieces, from allmusic.com:

Symphony No. 3
Threnody (For the Victims Of Hiroshima)
De Natura Sonoris II

And a very interesting paper on Fluorescences from the Library of Congress. From the paper:

“The most distinctive timbres contributing to the sonic fabric of this work are the eerie voices of the flexaton, siren, sega, and a typewriter, included as members of the sixth percussion battery. The aural effects heard in Fluorescences go well beyond the percussive and glissandolike gestures of Polymorphia; performers are instructed to hum while they play, to saw wood or iron with a hand saw, to rub percussion instruments vigorously with a metal file, and to rub the soundboard of the string instruments with an open hand. For each of these new gestures, Penderecki created graphic symbols, all of which are derived from the initial conceptual graphic outline for the composition. “

I wish I knew what she meant by “sega”…

Freeform 08-10-08 – Megaupload

Tonight’s show features the cartoon jazz of Franco Godi, Turkish and Hungarian psychedelic music, some blissful distorted drones and a newly released 2005 composition by Steve Reich.

Also, music from these Men of Men:

Baris Manco

Klaus Nomi

And a mildly cruel twist on fulfilling a listener’s fifth straight Dolly Parton request.

Thanks for listening!