It’s the narrative stupid!

The “New York Times” did a story on those helped by Obamacare. The prime person was taking advantage, she was getting long-delayed dental care, but she was against national health care, because of the death panels. Over 40% of Americans believe they exist, even though they don’t.

How did this happen?

The anti-Obamacare adherents controlled the narrative.

You don’t play for today, you play for tomorrow. Otherwise, you never win.

Like the Republicans. They thought the judiciary was becoming too liberal. So they formed the Federalist Society on campuses, and years later right-leaning judges were a force in the system. The same way these same people realized fighting abortion on a national level was nearly futile, so they decided to change their focus to the state level… Just try getting an abortion in Texas now. Hard to do. Statistics bear this out, abortions are down.

So the American narrative, instituted in the days of Ronald Reagan, is the government is inept and wastes your money, that you work so hard for, so you shouldn’t give it to them.

But the truth is America is a business. And businesses waste money. Just ask a VC, the victories cover the losses. Or ask yourself, ever buy something you didn’t use in the office? Of course you did. But the government can’t do this. And the government can’t hire people. That’s one of the reasons our economy has had a hard time recovering, under George Bush more people were working for the government. People need jobs, work needs to be done. But the real problem with the country is the deficit, and inflation is just around the corner. Huh? That was the narrative for the first half of Obama’s presidency, even though it turned out to be completely false.

And Obama’s main failing is experience. Being President is a job, but we run it like a popularity contest. But those running realize it’s a money contest. And he or she who wins is beholden to fat cats, even though there are more of us.

Income inequality is a scourge upon our nation. Not only does it undermine upward mobility, it drags down the economy. Because the economy burgeons when people have money to buy things. That’s right, the economy is driven by consumer spending. And the fat cats don’t buy a hundred cars or twenty five homes, never mind a score of plungers and other household items and electronics. But the narrative is the rich are job creators, and the poor pay no taxes. But the truth is everybody pays taxes, certainly sales taxes, usually payroll taxes, if they have a job. But the poor have been demonized, as if having no cash is a character flaw.

How long is this going to persist?

There are two different countries now. The affluent and the poor. And not all the affluent are billionaires. But the affluent can afford to enrich their children’s education, they can point them to good schools. And when these kids graduate they take jobs in banking and tech that ensure they won’t be poor, they’re running away from the underclass, never mind the disappearing middle class.

And false narratives persist in the music business. A recent one being Spotify doesn’t pay enough, that it should give more of its revenues to artists. But if the Swedish streaming service already pays 69% of its revenues to rights holders… Apple pays 70%. How are you supposed to have a profitable business with no margin? But Taylor Swift said the service sucks and pulled her music and now players are up in arms. Not realizing the enemy is obscurity and YouTube pays so much less.

Life is a game. And the rules are stacked against you. Did you read the “New York Times” story about private art museums? How did these wealthy people get big tax breaks? They paid their Congresspeople. Who listen to them because they donate. You may vote but you’re only significant when the numbers are counted, then you’re forgotten.

And then there are the pejoratives, like “socialism.” Read this piece in yesterday’s “Los Angeles Times” saying how much better life is in Scandinavia, especially Norway:

“The American Way over the Nordic Model? Are we crazy?”

But they have high taxes and socialism kills incentive! But the truth is the American Dream lives larger overseas, where they have national health care and a safety net and…

So you’re working two jobs and buying lottery tickets and trying out for the “Voice” believing if you just work harder, you can be like them. You can never be like them. They let a few people through so you’ll continue to believe in the game, but the odds of upward mobility are infinitesimal. If you think you can get ahead on two minimum wage jobs you don’t eat and need no shelter, and then you still won’t succeed. But you believe you will.

Because of the narrative.

America is the greatest country in the world!

Pledge fealty to the troops!

All this nationalistic hogwash that has you believing you’re gonna be a winner, that things are good.

Meanwhile, you’re watching sports, you’ve got to root for something, especially if you can’t root for yourself.

And then you complain that music is bad. Of course it is, who’s going to become a musician? No one educated with a brain. And then envious of the techies, all those who do break through will do anything for a buck, they’ve got no backbone. But you can’t criticize their behavior, because of the narrative, that Napster crippled the music business and everybody is broke.

Kind of like the Long Tail narrative, if you create it there’s an audience for it. Probably not, other than your mother and your girlfriend. While you keep hearing the internet has democratized art, the truth is it’s created a world of blockbusters. With so little time and access to everything we only want the best, we only have time to check out the famous. It’s like everybody in Paducah is competing for affection with movie stars. That’s right, if you play in a band, the Stones are in the club next door, that’s what the internet is like.

And change is everywhere. Bands used to have places to play live. By time you heard them, they’d played a zillion gigs and were good, now you’re just getting overwhelmed by wannabes, telling you to check out their substandard wares online.

He who controls the narrative controls the country. Money is important, but not as much as power. And oftentimes they go hand in hand, but the cycle is broken in art. That’s right, one song created in your basement can change the world, ask not only Barry McGuire, but Lorde. But you desire to work with the hitmakers du jour, you want to hang with the rich and famous, you want to get out, flying private and drinking Cristal instead of being able to pay your bills in an apartment in the city. You have a dream, but as John Lennon said, the dream is over.

Meanwhile, media, except for the occasional story in the newspaper, keeps reinforcing a narrative that keeps you powerless. That’s right, the media killed Occupy Wall Street, and now the new Congress wants to eviscerate Dodd Frank. The media quashed civil rebellion against police brutality. That’s right, now the narrative is the men and women in blue have a tough job and we’re just not behind them enough. And I’m not saying it’s black and white, but I will say if you think racism is dead, you’re probably on the Supreme Court, which got rid of voting laws. The same Supreme Court that is now right-leaning because of the Federalist Society.

We need leaders.

In the sixties they came from the youth. Who were in college without momentous debt, brought up in middle class homes believing, truthfully, that opportunity was plentiful. And money and attention was garnered by artists, with universal appeal. Not the outsiders, but those on the charts, with an audience. Today everybody’s so busy trying to pay their bills and make it they don’t have time to protest.

But they should.

But there are no leaders, no one telling them the truth in a narrative they can understand. That taxes are good, they put music in school. Instead, the narrative is public schools suck and home-schooling is best and we should have vouchers to get out of bad schools. How about a voucher to get out of a bad neighborhood, to move to Manhattan into one of those apartments the fat cats occupy for only two weeks a year? How about a voucher for a private island vacation in the Caribbean? How about a voucher for an audience with a Senator who will write legislation allowing you to avoid paying taxes, or have your income taxed at capital gains rates, like the hedge funders?

It all sounds overwhelming, it all sounds undoable. You’re too busy trying to get ahead yourself to help everybody else.

Which is exactly how they want it. Divide and conquer. If you’re fighting your brother, you don’t have time to fight them.

But you’ve got to love your brother. You’ve got to unite. You’ve got to see we’re stronger together than apart. That the American way is in peril. That America is us. Not only the rich in the news, but the hardworking people who go to work each day and put most of their income into commodities, food and drink and products, that keep America humming. Or at least used to.

In the information society too many know nothing. They’re aware of gossip, but not basic economic precepts. Just like music is in disarray, with only a small segment of the public aware of the hits, most people know nothing about how the world works.

And we can either blame them or enlighten them.

Or we can let the usual suspects herd us like cattle into doing what’s best for them.

What about what’s best for us?

“Writing Off the Warhol Next Door, Art Collectors Gain Tax Benefits From Private Museums”

And they say women can’t be funny.

Once upon a time we looked up to movie stars, they were royalty we emulated and adored. Now they’re fodder for derision. They don’t realize we don’t care about their high concept films. That’s right Nic Cage, you were a star, now you’re a punchline. We revere money and actors ain’t got much, which is why your agents are all invested in tech and sports, furthermore you know nothing about investments, constantly losing your shirt on real estate deals, leasing worthless cars, believing that life is about looks and not power, and then Tina Fey and Amy Poehler go on to shoot it all to hell, they make us believers, illustrating the power of art to ridicule, inform and tickle our funny bone all at the same time.

We adore the NFL because life doesn’t make sense. Unlike television, there’s a limited number of teams. Sure, they’re beating each other to hell, but at least we’ve got something to root for, something to believe in while America goes down the tubes. And if you don’t think America is busy dying, you don’t realize the dream is over, that if you make it from the bottom to the top you’re the exception, not the rule. But that doesn’t keep everybody from praying for success, when the truth is if you weren’t born on third base, you might as well give up right now.

So the NFL gets stratospheric ratings because we feel involved, we know the teams, if not the players. It makes sense to us.

But Hollywood stopped making sense years ago. Which is why movie grosses are down. As far as television…we may be in a golden age of drama, but no one’s got time to watch it all, and you need a subscription to not only cable and HBO, but Amazon and Netflix, the landscape is incomprehensible, but don’t tell that to Amy Pascal who thinks running a studio counts. The public has got no idea who runs the record labels and they don’t care. Because if it’s all about the billions and you haven’t even got the potential of making ten digits, we’re not interested.

We’re only interested in ourselves. Everybody is a star. And Jennifer Aniston may be labeled America’s sweetheart, but we gag on the overhype of her latest flick, and feel sorry for her evaporated biological window, because, after all, if life isn’t about reproduction, it doesn’t make biological sense.

And then come two girls you wouldn’t date in high school, who joked with the boys who held all their romance in the palm of their hands, and they proceed to skewer the audience and lift this entire half-baked show off the ground on their very narrow shoulders.

First you have to disbelieve.

That’s what America is all about, believing. Did you read James Fallows’s essay about how we lose wars because we’re not hard enough on the troops? We’re not hard enough on movies and music, we don’t demand enough, everybody tells us to be satisfied and we’re not.

But then we’ve got these two women making fun of the institution.

And then they break the cardinal rule of modern communication, they deliver a joke without explaining it, requiring those at home to fill in the blanks.

That’s right, Tina and Amy made a joke about cake without stating the obvious, it was only implied…THAT THOSE IN ATTENDANCE ARE SO BUSY DIETING THEY’VE NEVER TASTED IT!

And there you have it folks. Despite their self-anointment as royalty, the stars are missing out. Not only on the big money, but food, which is much more of a hit than any flick. They think it’s about the exterior when we all know it’s about what’s inside.

And then Tina and Amy go into a routine of who would you rather…

This is Howard Stern territory. Who you’d rather screw. But they’re doing it on national television. Titillating the audience as it squirms in its seat.

Proving once again, if you’re talented enough, if you’re willing to test limits, you can go to the head of the class. Tina Fey can be absent from the airwaves and reclaim her throne in ten minutes, just by doing her act, spectacularly. It’s not about the hype, but the work, what a concept.

It doesn’t matter who wins. Trophies might be taken home, but we forget the victories almost instantly. It’s about impacting people’s lives, making a difference in the culture. And it’s not that hard if you’ve paid your dues and have the skills.

But we don’t want to focus on that. Not in the entertainment industrial complex. We want to focus on your ass, your malleability, we don’t want something too edgy.

And then these two middle-aged women take the international stage and blow us all away.

WTF?

“The Tragedy of the American Military”

Is it only about getting paid?

Don’t tell me it’s about breaking music, that canard disappeared in the last decade. It’s almost impossible to get noticed. Kanye does a track with Paul McCartney and it’s dead in a day, despite being featured in every newspaper and on every music website extant. Getting the message out is not that difficult, sticking is near impossible. How does a brand help with that?

The dirty little secret is the majordomos, the handlers, the business people in the music business, need to get paid. They’re envious of their rich friends, they want to maintain their lifestyles, and the only people who can give them this kind of money is corporations.

But corporations are antithetical to art. Hell, they’re antithetical to truth, that’s why newspapers have Chinese Walls, keeping sales from editorial. Because once editorial is influenced by sales…

You get the inane online culture wherein everything’s about clicks, about advertising, where writers are paid by the number of views. In other words, news is irrelevant unless most people care. And that’s a piss-poor state of affairs. Because news is not a popularity contest.

Ultimately music is. Assuming you want to make a living from it. But who are you playing to? The audience or the brands?

When Michelin sells tires to BMW the public is not involved. Oh, the French tire company cuts a deal to be on the car so that ultimately buyers will replace their worn out Michelins with new ones, but art is different, art is sold directly to the audience.

Unless you start with radio. And radio is beholden to its advertisers, but they come after the audience. Radio is a gatekeeper, the most powerful one we have. But radio knows that the listener comes first, it’s got to play what people want to hear.

And the inane acts pledge fealty to their fans.

But the truth is everybody in the music business is dying to get paid.

So where does the corporate money, the brand money, figure in?

It goes straight to the acts’ bottom line. It’s not about spreading the word, it’s not about making the act bigger, it’s about lining acts’ coffers, because if you can sell out arenas you’re just not rich enough, you’ve got to make more, you’ve got to be greedy, that’s the American religion, greed, Christianity’s got nothing to do with it.

And forget all the working class acts who say they can’t pay their bills. Truth is brands want nothing to do with them, nothing significant.

So what we’ve got is a thin layer of blockbuster acts more interested in brands than fans. That’s the truth, no matter what they say. It’s not about art, it’s about getting rich.

And it sucks.

What happened to truth, justice and the American Way? Speaking from the heart, resonating with the audience?

That went out the window. Now you’ll put the whiskey name in the song. You think you’ve got your hand in the pocket of the brand, but really it’s vice versa, there’s a chilling effect.

The brand doesn’t want to know you do dope. They don’t want to know about your artistic lifestyle. The brands are run by people who play it safe, who haven’t got a creative bone in their bodies. They’re about spreadsheets and meeting expectations whereas art is about confounding expectations.

And you wonder why music is a second-class citizen. It’s got no self-respect. It’s like a whore who denies that fact. At least Gene Simmons says he’s all about the money, at least he’s honest, none of these other pricks trying to manipulate the public are.

Then again, we’ve got Hillary Clinton running for President by saying what she thinks people want to hear, as opposed to her own personal truth. Made her lose to Obama eight years ago, probably the same thing will happen this time. Really, the woman who said she didn’t want to stay home and bake cookies says her favorite book is the Bible? Make me puke.

But we know politicians are duplicitous.

Artists are not supposed to be so.

So my problem isn’t so much with the corporations themselves, the brands themselves getting into music, but the aforementioned chilling effect, the way it emphasizes the worst elements of the music game.

Isn’t being adored by millions and being able to get laid every night of the week enough? Believe me, those billionaire businessmen don’t have this, no way.

You’ve got your charisma, you live by your own hours, can’t you revel in that? Why do you want to be like everybody else? People don’t trust brands. Jeff Bezos may be rich, but he’s hated more than Fred Durst. That’s who you want to take money from and hang with? What are you gonna talk about? Whether to use a B flat?

It’s not only the music business, our whole nation needs a reset.

The richies have polluted the waters. They say they create all the jobs, that we’re worthless without them, that we need to be like them.

But nothing is further from the truth.

The truth is everybody should be able to pay their bills, have a roof over their head and food on the table, hopefully via a well-paying job. But after we institute the floor, life is about choices. And those who tell you to sell out to the man have no backbone.

Can you imagine a corporation tying up with John Lennon? Who incited controversy seemingly every time he opened his mouth? You wonder why we’ve got no more John Lennons? Because people are afraid to piss off the payers, the man.

But the truth is there’s not a soul in the music business who will not make a deal with an act with a hit song. You have to be a rapist, you have to be a child molester not to get a deal. And the truth is, some of the biggest stars of all time are both!

Not that I’m condoning that. It’s just that music is a seedy business. Always has been, always will be.

And the enemy is not the techies, but us. Yes, we who make the music and promote it, we’ve got no convictions, no balls, we can’t say no. We judge everything by money and however much we’ve got is never enough.

Musicians have more Twitter followers than almost everybody.

Musicians dominate YouTube.

Ticket prices have far outpaced inflation, and the truth is you can’t get a good one.

Enough with this hogwash about a financially challenged business. That’s just for wannabe and working class acts and those working at the label who got caught in the middle of a paradigm shift, with most of the money now coming from live instead of recordings. The truth is there’s a ton of money in music if you’re a star.

And just like in business, stars get all the money. It’s even that way in journalism. Don’t deny reality. Hell, in a democracy we all gravitate to greatness, and in the internet age all greatness is easily accessible.

So have some self-respect. Be willing to leave some cash on the table. Know that your power is not money, but your voice.

Focus on that.

It’ll deliver everything you need.

I woke up thinking about Turkish drummers
It didn’t take long, I don’t think much about Turkish drummers
But it made me think of Germany and the guy who sold me cigarettes
Who’d been in the Afghan secret police
Who made the observation
That it’s hard
To live

“Get Up Jonah”
Bruce Cockburn

Get Up Jonah – Spotify

Why does all the best art come from Canada?

Could it be the government support, or the framework of the country, a giant high school spread over a vast landscape where everybody knows each other and you can never rise above so you dig deeper into who you are and end up creating works that touch the soul in a way nothing from south of the border does.

Come on, whether it be Broken Social Scene or its descendants, if you want cutting edge music you look to the Great White North. And now you do for books too.

“Station Eleven” is the best book I’ve read since “The Goldfinch,” the only one that cried out to me all day long to be read.

It was recommended to me by Felice, not my Felice, but Felice Ecker of Girlie Action, in New York. We’ve never met, but we’ve exchanged notes on books. She told me to trust her on this one.

I trust no one. What kind of existence is that? I know. But ever since my divorce… That wrecked me. You stand up in front of God and family and say it’s forever and when it’s not, when someone jumps ship, it does something to you, makes you realize we’re all on our own and if you’re not looking out for yourself, no one else is.

So I researched “Station Eleven.” And it turns out it was nominated for the National Book Award. Which is imprimatur enough for me, although I was worried, you know how the highly vaunted is oftentimes unreadable, laden with so much description, so rewritten as to be bulletproof.

But “Station Eleven” is not.

“Station Eleven” is about plot. And mood.

So I’m sitting in an Airbus high above the western landscape, ruminating about my anger over the entitled, those with service dogs on the plane, when suddenly something happens in the book that creeps me out so much, weirds me out so much, that I say to myself…THIS IS FANTASTIC!

It was ominous. In a way horror can be, but “Station Eleven” is not horror.

“Station Eleven” is a post-apocalyptic novel. Not my thing at all. But the great thing about life is anything can be your thing if it’s good enough, and “Station Eleven” is.

“Survival is insufficient.”

That’s what you get in award-winning books, aphorisms, nuggets of wisdom the author has hoarded for years to deposit into the pages, and the result is oftentimes so disjointed and fake, because no one talks that way, and what we’re looking for in our art is truth.

But it turns out the above quote is from STAR TREK! I love a book with popular culture references. And the truth is, survival is insufficient.

That’s what’s wrong with American culture today, it’s all about survival.

Let’s start with the best and the brightest. Going into banking and tech not for the fulfillment, but for the financial rewards, they’re driven by a fear of being poor.

And those in the arts are imitative. Or bitching that they’ve got no recognition, that they can’t survive. America is so desperate it’s frightening. We’re either working or getting high, believing if we sleep we’ll get left behind and never be able to catch up. There’s no time for reflection, no time to do anything that doesn’t pay.

Because life is hard.

And it’s certainly hard after the apocalypse, after the defining event that changes everything. When mere survival is in question. And when that’s gone, what do you do…stage plays and perform music.

But I’m not gonna give anything away. I don’t want to ruin it.

And there’s no sense ruining a book, something that takes hours to complete. A book is no movie, no sporting event, not something neat and consumable before dinner. A book stretches out, it requires commitment, but with commitment comes reward, at least in the case of “Station Eleven.”

What happens when everything we know disappears. Everything we depend upon. Not only our friends and family, but electricity and phone calls and air travel and…

We revert to what once was, aware of what is gone and will never come back.

And it takes a while to compute. That’s another flaw in the modern game, everybody is supposed to be sans emotions, supposed to snap out of it and get over it instantly. But the truth is changes take time to digest, and when you come out the other side, you’re different. You’re capable of doing things you never contemplated.

Like kill.

Emily St. John Mandel is 35. Because you can’t write a worthwhile book if you’re a pre-teen.

And this is not her first book, because getting it right the first time is as impossible as winning the Olympic Gold on your very first try, the very first time you strap on skis.

You’ve got to experience not only victories, but losses in order to comment on the human condition. But south of the border our art is laden with testifying winners and petty feuds. Introspection is for losers.

The twist is not fully believable.

The denouement is disappointing.

But if you don’t get hooked by this book, if you don’t become intrigued and enraptured by some of the characters, you’re just another south of the border always wake zombie looking to get rich.

And your money will never keep you warm at night.

Station Eleven