Which way do you want it? To be able to get an Uber at midnight or pay a cheaper price for a regulated cab in the morning?

I feel like I’m living in “Groundhog Day.” To get up and repeat a process is so weird. No one is prepared for it, especially the cab company, which canceled my reservation, it had to be a mistake, after all I went to the airport YESTERDAY!

And when the car didn’t show up, I checked Uber.

The prices were STRATOSPHERIC!

UberX was nearly double the price of a cab and UberXL, which I needed, because of my skis, was about the same price as hiring a black car in advance.

How did this happen?

I’m confused. They say regulation is bad for business, but what about us common folks?

Now I know why the white working man feels so detached. Maybe we all feel detached, that the world is spinning out of control, that no one is looking after our rights, that it’s every man and woman for themselves.

Maybe it’s always been this way, they just told us otherwise.

But one thing I do know is when they deregulate, we’re the ones who usually suffer.

Now I know I’m at the airport and prices came down when the airlines were deregulated but have you noticed they’ve now gone back up and they’re scamming you to boot, with no-frills fares, with no carry-on baggage, never mind luggage under the plane? So you’re being nickeled and dimed all day long, it’s like being pecked to death by ducks, and it’s making us a coarser society. Ever checked into a hotel recently? The stated price is nowhere near the final price.

And I’m not an economist and everybody’s got their own opinion and their own news sources and I’m not sure whether to engage or retreat.

The clerk didn’t believe I was entitled to free baggage. He had to ask around and call to confirm what I already knew, that AA elite status transferred to Alaska. But then he wanted to charge me $75 for a barely overweight bag, as if the cash were going to go directly to him. I shifted some contents and avoided the expense but he was eager to take my money.

And I know, I know, the internet disrupted the music business, sucking a ton of cash out of recorded music and minting new billionaires and not everybody can play live, but in a digitized society we’re all looking for experiences and when we all give up our possessions, and I’m ready to now, everything’s on demand, where does all the money go?

Soon the cab companies will be bankrupt. It will only be Uber. Drivers working for a pittance as Travis Kalanick continues to employ subterfuge that our underfunded government cannot detect.

Meanwhile, there are those who want to thrown the government overboard, believing it’s bloated and inefficient.

I just have one question…

Who’s gonna look out for me?

I used to be afraid of flying. Until one especially gruesome flight into Denver wherein Jay Krugman leaned over the back of his seat and told me I could freak out as much as I wanted to, but I was never going to die in a plane crash.

That cured me. I’m now a relatively calm flier. Especially since I learned turbulence is irrelevant, not indicative of any flaw at all, only air pockets. I’ve come to enjoy the ups and downs, to a degree anyway.

But then there was that flight out of Aspen about a decade back. There was a 5:15 cutoff, after that we’d be stranded. It was blowin’ and a-snowin’ and the pilot had us on standby, waiting for it to die down, and about 5:10, just before American had to pay for hotel rooms for the entire cabin, the pilot came over the intercom and said “We’re gonna go for it.”

Never a less encouraging word has been heard.

Now there are worse airports than Aspen. I think of Telluride, that one in Nepal, but Aspen is surrounded by mountains and that private plane crashed back when and they gun the engines and we leave the runway and we’re bouncing up and down and gaining little altitude and I’m starting to get scared and I figure the best way to assuage my anxiety is to speak to my brother, in this case, Mark Kates, sitting next to me, I asked him if he was scared, and he told me he most definitely was and he preferred I didn’t talk about it.

Obviously I lived through the experience.

But I wasn’t so sure today.

You see I was flying to Sun Valley. There, I said it, let my inbox fill up with wankers denigrating my lifestyle. I’ve become inhibited. Not only do I worry about the political police, but the financial ones too. Everybody wants to drag you down into the hole they’re in, as if living on the bottom with pockets turned inside out makes you a better person. As a result, those who do and have remove themselves from the discussion. If you’re boasting about how much money you’ve got, you probably haven’t got that much, kinda like our President.

Anyway, it was my idea. Sun Valley historically gets less snow than other western ski areas, but it’s got the best mountain, one with no flat spots, it’s the same steepness from the first foot to the last. And in the case of Limelight, on the Warm Springs side, that’s close to thirty degrees. As in steep, if you’re not a skier.

Marc wanted to go to Whistler. Which I’ve sworn off of. Because the altitude’s too low, barely over 2,000 feet. In March, it rains at the bottom, it’s soaking wet, even in January the weather can be less than winter.

As for Sun Valley, it’s less high than the Colorado resorts, 5,945′ instead of Vail’s 8,150′. But despite that, they’re having the year of years, the best February since record-keeping began. 294″ and counting this season, whereas Vail hasn’t even hit 200″.

But Vail is easier to get to.

And my heart sank when Tom weighed in from Chicago that their flight from Denver to Sun Valley was canceled because of the wind. He rebooked through Boise, which required a three hour drive, and I felt almost guilty taking my two hour and change direct flight from sunny Los Angeles.

Only it was gonna be snowing when we landed. It does not stop snowing in Sun Valley this year, global warming is making it a hotbed of precipitation. And that means we might get diverted. But Alaska/Horizon just instituted new technology they said was gonna raise the landing rate from 60% to 95%. Of course, that turned out not to be true. The effective rate is now 80%. Would we get diverted? To Twin Falls or Boise too?

That was the question on my mind as we were flying over the Santa Monica Mountains.

Now the plane is a turboprop. And it was only half full. And I had all the newspapers, I was thinking about what I was gonna do when we landed and then…

I became intrigued by the landscape. All the solar panels out in the desert. I just don’t believe the world we live in. One wherein money trumps environment. The story in the “Times” was how fuel standards were going to be rolled back. So the car companies can sell more SUVs and trucks. Can we dictate that no one can buy an SUV unless they need four wheel drive, and no one can buy a truck unless they haul stuff? How did automobiles become fashion items to the detriment of us all?

But to restrict choice would be un-American, that’s what they tell me.

But soon we won’t own any cars at all. A day I’m looking forward to, as I waited at a stop sign this morning for a woman to roll through the intersection in her RX330. Yes, she was texting.

And then the pilot came over the intercom.

Now I’ve got my Bose headphones on, I just got them fixed via this place on the internet, and believe me, the engines make a noise and you need them and I pull the cans off and the pilot says…

There’s a caution light on.

Now that does not make me anxious, he’s not freaked out, so I won’t be either.

But rather than fly on to Sun Valley we’ve got to go back to LAX so they can look at it.

Sounds reasonable to me, I can handle the delay.

But then the plane started to bounce. And everybody onboard became best friends. You see, people got scared.

But no one as scared as the flight attendant, on the phone, gesturing wildly.

And then I started to think, was my number up?

Now I’m too old to die young. I’ve had a good run. And I’m less concerned about it all ending than the way it’s gonna go down. The pilot is making bizarre maneuvers, where he twists the plane a bit and then does not. And we don’t seem to be heading back to LAX. Are we going to Ontario? Will we land in the Valley? Will we land on the street? Will we glide down or go nose first?

And I can see the propeller turning, which I could not earlier, so I’m getting a bit freaked out. And I don’t recognize any of the landscape and I can no longer read and I’m starting to white knuckle it.

The other flight attendant tells me this has never happened to her before.

That’s not encouraging.

I was once on a flight out of Denver, to Aspen, once again, and it was bumping around like a pogoing punk. After fifteen minutes the pilot came on and said “As you can see, we’re having a problem.”

YES, I CAN SEE!

The cabin pressure system wasn’t working, we couldn’t fly at altitude and we were going back to DIA.

Which we did, they fixed it, and we were on our way.

And another time, to Denver, from Burbank, there was a fuel leak, and we sat on the tarmac as they called San Francisco and argued about wrench size and stunningly they fixed it so we made it to Denver, although we missed our connection.

So I was thinking this would be no big deal.

But maybe it would be. That’s the thing about life, it throws you curveballs, issues surprises. Kinda like my college buddy’s wife, everything was going smoothly and now she’s got cancer. You think you’re immune, but you’re not.

And now we’re vaguely headed in the right direction, but we’re far south of L.A. Are we gonna have to fly over the ocean to land? Do I have a better chance of surviving if we put down in the Pacific? But it’s winter and the water’s cold and there are no life jackets.

And we’re way too high. I can see the plane landing on the next runway over, it’s much lower than us.

And this runway, no one ever uses it. Are we gonna land on the golf course?

Then the plane dropped like it was hot and we were on the tarmac and I turned on my phone and started texting away with a sigh of relief you rarely have unless your life is in danger.

But then it got really weird. We were speeding through the airport, as if someone onboard was gonna have a baby or something. Why such urgency if we were already on the ground?

And finally we were at a gate and the personnel huddled and told us to get off the plane.

Now what?

And, of course, we passengers are now all buddies. We’re telling war tales, revealing our observations. Turns out everybody was scared, primarily because of the flight attendant’s behavior.

Then they have us get the carry-on bags, you know, the stuff you normally take on the plane which they make you check on a flight like this because the overhead bins are so small.

And then I can see the luggage coming off the plane.

And nobody knows nothing.

But then I see the pilot, I go up to talk to him. He’s off, so this can’t be a good sign.

And I’m worried about the crew timing out, this has happened to me, they’ve got the plane, it’s got the gas, but the pilots have too many hours on the clock.

But this gentleman told me they’d just begun, they had plenty of time, nothing but time as Fountains of Wayne would say.

So then I went deeper. What exactly happened?

Well, the caution light was for the engine…

Now can this plane fly on one prop? I didn’t even want to ask. Especially after he grimaced and told me this had never happened to him before.

But the pilot thought it was the computer that ran the engine as opposed to the engine itself but whatever the truth was I was glad I was on the ground.

As for going back up, would I get back on that plane?

Yes, I would. But that plane ain’t going nowhere.

And neither is anybody else.

There was no spare plane. Everybody was flummoxed.

They’re charging their phones, lighting up the internet.

And it made me glad I’ve got a new one, an iPhone 7 Plus to be exact, because the truth is after about eighteen months, maybe a bit less, the batteries start to die. And if you’ve got AppleCare, an overpriced warranty that “Consumer Reports” tells you to forgo, they’ll give you a new device. And you should buy AppleCare, because the truth is your iPhone is your most treasured device, the one you use most, you want the peace of mind. And I start to Google and look for flights…

And there are none.

None that get you there in less than twenty four hours.

And, what’s worse, there’s no direct on Tuesday.

And everybody’s freaking out and the help ain’t much help, because after all they were not up in the plane, they did not experience what we did, and they’re in their hometown, Los Angeles.

And they won’t say the flight is canceled and then it is and I call to cancel my pickup in Sun Valley and get a hold of my travel agent, an archaic concept, I know.

But you want one for just such a situation.

I rang in, he searched for flights today, and found none, like me, and then rebooked me tomorrow just like that, while everybody was still in line. Worth the price, wouldn’t you say?

I would.

So I turned tail and went to baggage claim and grabbed a taxi. I prefer Uber, but I was schlepping so much gear.

And the van’s seats were broken and the experience was horrible and I don’t know how the taxi industry survives.

Then again, the driver on the way in said he couldn’t make it on Uber, he only made sixty bucks on New Year’s Eve.

And I’m thinking about how much this is costing me, to go nowhere, the trips back and forth to my house.

And what I’m missing in Idaho. Everybody else, with their travails, arrived.

And tomorrow I’ll be flying all day. First to Seattle, then east from there on a tiny plane once again.

But at least I’m alive.

“‘It was an emergency,’ he wrote,’ and when dealing with emergent behavior there is nothing to do but respond. I was in the moment. And it was not the fire I imagined or dreamed of. It was the fire I got.'”

This should not have been good. I never read the “T” magazine, the “New York Times” style supplement, because it’s all fluff and no substance, all pictures and no meaning. But I was intrigued by the cover, with a pic of Beck and the title “The Art of Sound.”

Remember when Beck meant Jeff? Ironically, it’s the English guitarist who is iconic, who will be remembered, he was getting his victory lap and then he fired his new manager Harvey Goldsmith and returned to that state he’s been inhabiting for most of the past few decades, hiding in plain sight but not acknowledged. It’d be like Mozart was standing in our midst and everybody shrugged.

And the piece on Beck had my eyes glazing over. I loved “Loser,” went to see him at some bowling alley where he emerged in a “Star Wars” helmet and refused to play it, but he gets way too much press for someone with so little impact. If this is pushing the envelope, we need a bigger envelope.

And there’s an interview with Kendrick Lamar, but I haven’t gotten there yet, because my eyes are bugging out about what Tom Waits had to say.

You have to know, back in the seventies, Mr. Waits was not an icon, just another struggling singer/songwriter looking for an audience. He was on a major label and got a push, all acts did back then, but he was just part of the firmament, he did not live on the mountaintop as he does today. That’s what longevity will give you. Not only inspiration and a muse, not only the audience catching up with you, but a spot where you feel comfortable in your art like an old pair of moccasins and you can stretch without worrying and your competitors have given up and gotten real jobs.

Now I met Tom once, when he was still living at the Tropicana, when he said he kept his tools in his fridge, remember when artists had a sense of humor, that’s one reason Van Halen succeeded, David Lee Roth’s cheekiness, and I’d be lying if I said Tom was real friendly, but this was just another drunken after hours conversation at the Troubadour, when he was recognized by the people there and not too many more and now Tom’s a legend.

So, if we go back to the quote above, it turns out Tom was trying to avoid the draft by becoming a fireman. We were all confronted with that possibility, having our ass shot off, our lives interrupted, maybe ended, and all our choices were not proud ones, but we had to escape the horror. And Tom tells a story of a chicken farm in flames and that’s the emergency he’s referring to above, putting out the fire, dousing the flying chickens with water. And there you have inspiration right there.

That’s what art is all about. Being inspired, catching lightning in a bottle, in reaction to some stimulus.

That’s why today’s popular music is so rotten. It’s written in the laboratory in search of dollars as opposed to being composed out in the meadow in search of truth. When you get twenty people together in the studio, build a track over time, you get something that may work on the hit parade, but it rarely touches your soul.

And writing songs is not about creating a hit.

“If you want to catch songs you gotta start thinking like one, and making yourself an interesting place for them to land like birds or insects. Once you get two or three tunes together, wherever three or more are gathered, then others come. It’s like a line for a hot dog place, you know? And when there’s four people lined up on the sidewalk, some people will stop and get in line just ’cause there’s a line.”

It’s about getting in the right space and catching a fire. Putting yourself in a mood, sitting at the piano as Waits does, taking a shower, and seeing what comes. And when it does come, letting the roll continue.

Any artist will tell you that. You’ve got to get the pump primed. And once it is, you’ll be stunned what comes out. Oftentimes the second is better than the first, even the third. And you’re so deep into it you’re not really sure, it’s a trance. And even if nothing commercial results you’ve been on a satisfying trip, you’ve got a smile on your face.

Art has been denigrated in our society. We pay fealty to false gods, but nurturing the creative process is dead. Not only is there no music in schools, we’re inundated with charts and awards, as if either reflected quality. Arts are not sports. There is no clear winner or loser. It’s about creating something that touches people. And unlike sports, arts when done right are not evanescent. Artworks sit in the agora waiting to be discovered years, sometimes decades down the road. They’re time bombs just waiting to go off. And oftentimes they’re hiding in plain sight before they become hits. Waiting for the public and the gatekeepers to feel comfortable pushing the button, waiting for word to spread.

So I know you don’t want to be an artist. My inbox tells me that.

You want to be a businessman. You complain about Spotify and making a living not knowing that that isn’t the life of an artist. An artist, as Tom Waits said above, is someone who responds to stimuli, who can’t help but get it all down, not knowing the end result, but confident this is what they were put on Earth to do.

Three Iconic Musicians on Artistic Creation — and Its Importance Now

This is an individual project.

I just finished reading “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From The Twentieth Century,” by Timothy Snyder.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

Because sooner if not later there’s going to be a terrorist event and you’re gonna lose all your personal rights. That’s how they do it, especially Putin. Under the guise of keeping you safe, you sacrifice the freedom you think you’re fighting for. Like when the Reichstag burned up and Hitler used that as an excuse to declare a governmental emergency, which lasted for twelve years, until the end of World War II. It can happen here. It’s happened in Russia. Where Putin blew up/burned up his own establishments and then under the guise of keeping people safe got a stranglehold on power. Because never underestimate people’s fear.

It’s making them act like sheep today.

Most people are afraid to speak up, for fear of standing out, for fear of being ridiculed, they just want to get along. And Victor Klemperer’s friends slowly became Nazis, one by one, because it felt right, kinda like the internet bubble back in the year 2000. Remember when we heard it was a new economy and the old rules just did not apply? But they still do, they always do, the bubble burst and it turns out managed funds do worse than index funds, did you see Warren Buffett’s pronouncement the other week? He said that rich people don’t want to put their money in index funds, which outperform hedge funds, because they believe they’re special and entitled to special treatment, what the hoi polloi uses they can’t, they’re entitled to something better.

But the point is less about elites than conventional wisdom. Which has been wrong time and again. Even the pollsters. What bugs me about all of them, including Nate Silver, is they just can’t admit they’re wrong. They point to statistics saying that Hillary still won the popular vote as justification for their veracity and sanity, but they missed the major point. It was about who won the election, not statistics. But ain’t that America, where no one wants to admit they’re wrong and take another path.

Now the reason I read “On Tyranny” is because I got an e-mail from Jesse Kornbluth. We all have sources we trust implicitly, whose advice we take, or at least check out and judge for ourselves. You can see what Jesse had to say about Snyder’s book here:

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder
By Jesse Kornbluth

And Snyder can’t write and he hates the internet but he’s a cogent thinker and a Yale professor and his twenty lessons are good starting points.

But let’s go to the internet.

Because it parallels what’s going on in our society today.

When people decry Spotify/streaming, are they any different from the white working men and women who were left behind in the new economy? Hell, they hate Daniel Ek more than they hate Spotify, they consider Ek an interloper, who became a billionaire on their backs.

Forget that theft was rampant before Spotify.

But we’ve got endless reports of acts saying they got puny royalties from streaming services. Old paragons of truth like David Crosby decry streaming, which is just plain sad. Because we live in a global economy and if you want to shut the doors and make America great again, you’re denying the fact that it wasn’t so great to begin with. You needed a record company to be in the game, only a few could compete. Do we live in an era of chaos? Absolutely! But you must march into the future, you cannot live in the past.

But the point is the whole music industry doesn’t want to believe in facts, wants to jet back to the past, and do you think it’s any different in government? Look at yourself first, question your own principles. Then see the world through a different lens.

And the power of the individual cannot be underestimated. And artists can reach more people than politicians, especially musicians, who rule the social media our world runs upon. But rather than speak truth, they’d rather collaborate with established hitmakers and churn out stuff that’s indecipherable from what came before.

Snyder says we must be students of history. Knowing that the future is gonna come.

But no one wants to remember yesterday, unless they’re looking through rose-colored glasses.

Yesterday was an era where artists said no. They left money on the table, their credibility was key. Now they want to be brands, and to tell you the truth I trust BMW and Amazon more than any artist, a whole bunch of corporations, they do their job better. I mean what is the job of an artist? To make money? To anesthetize the public?

So I vacillate between thinking it’s business as usual and believing we’re at a tipping point and everything’s up for grabs.

And I know you do too, unless you’re e-mailing me fake Breitbart stories accusing me of not covering the other side.

My e-mail was blowing up on Friday wondering when I was gonna write about Obama’s conspiracy. Huh? I checked the NYT and the WSJ…nothing. But on Breitbart, those pesky Democrats were wreaking havoc, we have to be saved from their ineptitude that pushed our nation to the brink.

Huh?

While you’re at it, read Tony Blair’s piece in the NYT today, quite cogent and reasonably insightful:

Tony Blair: Against Populism, the Center Must Hold

But the point is it comes down to you and me.

Snyder tells us to turn off the screens and read books, fat chance, but his point that TV news is a reality show bouncing from one headline to the next, with no investigation beneath the surface, is true.

But he asks us to be members of society, to forge tight-knit bonds that will help us endure the coming shocks.

I just don’t feel like anybody in the arts is doing anything. Other than making statements at awards shows.

Hell, there’s no truth in the Oscars themselves. Asking us who didn’t see the movies to tune in and watch the film industry laud the flicks.

But where is the movie with truth? Certainly not in a special effects comic book show.

As for records… Music is the most truthful medium of all. But we’ve abdicated that power in search of the almighty dollar.

Interesting times we live in.

But one thing’s for sure, if we sleep we’re gonna lose.

And right now, despite all the hoopla, too many people are sleeping.