Tuesday night's speech..

I felt almost a sense of guilt for having become so unsettled by Tuesday's speech; it seems as if the majority of pundits found it to be uplifting and mostly spot on in tone. I wonder if perhaps I've become too emotionally entwined with Obama's every movement. I call this 'joe louis' syndrome, how blacks in the '40s so closely identified with the boxer joe louis that when he lost to the german max schmelling many felt as if the entire black race had been let down. But I think I've put my finger now on the essence of my concern: I feel in my gut that Obama, while cracker jack smart and surrounded by ppl of great faculty, is doubling down on fiscal risk from a place of idealism, rather than accumulated wisdom. in other words, I think he knows he doesn't know wtf he's doing exactly but feels that he'll figure it out as he goes along, knowing he's smart and agile enough to responded adroitly to new information. However, I worry once he fills his plate at the buffet his hands may be too full to catch items falling by the wayside - - indeed that seems to be his very strategy: fill the plate to the brim and accept that not everything will make it from buffet to table. What important priorities won't make it whole? Wouldn't it be better to do a few things really well -- -and fund them well -- then try and do everything and poorly fund everything? And he's surrounded himself with banking insiders who seem loathe to inflict pain upon shareholders and bank management. Perhaps someone can explain to me what his larger strategy on the banks is , I cannot fathom it. Politics is all about choosing but I fear my man has accepted slapping some paint on the dilapidated american house and rebuilding upon its shaky foundation rather than ensuring the foundation is strong and can accept the weight of his proposed social engineering. Perhaps he feels he has no choice, I dunno. They're all waaay smarter than me so I just got to trust but verify, I guess. Geithner was in japan in the 90s, right? it seems like he knows his history and is therefore doomed to repeat it...I just don't understand...

it's still so jarring to see a black man - and black first lady - - in all the various presidential scenarios. It's all so fresh still. Furthermore, its not easy a'tall for my mind to accept the same political double speak, knocking down of straw men, and moral certitude that I've grown accustomed to seeing white presidents spew 24-7 coming from a black man. indeed I've certainly grown to expect duplicity from the american president, comes with the job. I mean, for most ppl of color, whether the president is democrat or republican he still is and/or represents 'the man'. And yet now a black man, and not just any black man, but barack obama, a man with seemingly an endless trove of once-in-a-lifetime skills and gifts, is 'the man'. and I expect him to REALLY shoot straight with me. not the wink-wink, stay on message realpolitik posturing that has become the preferred language of choice for our national leaders. probably asking too much, cause lawd knows he's better than ANY of these mostly sorry cats we had in there in my lifetime...

Welcome to the NEW USA! Where the "S" stands for sweden...

Here's an op-ed piece from a cat whose intelligence, patriotism and intellectual consistency I respect a great deal but with whom I almost never agree. Or to say it plain, I can't hardly STAND this m*^%$@!&r most all of the time. But on this one, hey whaddya know, I think he's spot on:

"The Obamaist Manifesto" by Charles Krauthammer

I liked the piece so much I even posted a comment on the WP site:

I must say I'm an Obama supporter, thru and thru...I believe he has the gifts and tools to be a great, transformative president. And I'm rooting for him. However, I unequivocally agree with Mr. Krauthammer's assessment. I suspect Obama wants us to move us towards becoming a sort of 21st century Sweden.

Now, there's nothing at all wrong with Sweden; I personally happen to love much of what I've seen of the country. It's a great place to visit! And there's much to admire, I think, about the Netherlands, Belgium, and other European Social Democracies. Personally speaking, my sensibilities are not at all offended by the idea of paying 60% taxes in exchange for government subsidized - - high quality - - health care, graduate education, etc. . The european approach is quite attractive in many respects. But would a similar system work in a land as endeared with personal freedom, social mobility and entrepreneurial spirit as the US? I'm quite dubious of the prospect. As Obama himself has said, our traditions have evolved in substantially different directions, and under wholly disparate stimuli I might add, than those in Europe. Plus, our demographics and current entitlement obligations strongly suggest that we cannot afford anything even resembling a European style mixed economy! Of course, its long been apparent that Europe cannot afford it either, but that's a whole nother, albeit strongly related, matter.

I was left with an unsettled feeling after Obama's speech. He has not yet offered the clarity of vision that, say, Reagan (with whom I disagreed on almost, well, everything) was able. We cannot have confidence that there's equal measure of accumulated wisdom counterbalancing Obama's idealism. Reagan had many years to hone his ideas, and even test case many as governor of California. I'm growing concerned that this brilliant, insightful academic is planning on using the position of US president (aka Leader of the Free World) to test case hopeful, quixotic theories of activist government. Perhaps Obama is ahead of us all, foreseeing the emergence of a new center-left method of governance. Perhaps he envisions a sort of free market/social democratic hybrid that somehow manages to avoid the innovation inhibiting elements of the 20th century welfare state. Perhaps his finger is set firmly on the pulse of the moment and he sees a roadmap of progress set brightly lit upon the gloomy shadows of the current financial abyss. One can hope.

For me, though, there's something intellectually disingenuous (if politically adroit) about Obama calling himself a non-ideological pragmatist, leading people to believe he's a centrist but pursuing straight down the line liberal policies. And straight down the line liberal spending to boot. Now we know why the President didn't clamp down on house democrats during the stimulus process. Pelosi was indeed carrying Obama's water. Good to know.

So yes, I agree with Mr. Krauthammer: Obama finally has begun to lay his cards on the table. Its an audacious, sprawling agenda (the non word ginormous comes to mind). Tuesday night, as he segued into the middle section of the speech, I began to experience a feeling similar to when the drop begins at the apex of a rollercoaster. That incomparable mix of exhilaration and uncertainty that some internalize as thrill, others as fear. I certainly voted for change but, perhaps naively, didn't really comprehend just how much or exactly what kind of change - - and how uncertain the prospect would make me feel - - until this week.

Can he really do it ALL?

This guy nails on the head the unease I've been feeling recently. I'm glad to hear there's others who feel a similar measure of cautious optimism. I feel like eddie murphy in trading places when randolph and mortimer dukes start giving him dan akroyd's s**t, "you mean all this is mine now? this vase right here, this is mine?" What Obama is pledging fiscally feels too good to be true. Yet I'm hopeful he's able to do it ALL, knock it out of the park. Perhaps I've simply grown cynical and cold after years of fearing this country was allergic to common sense :

"Can Obama Really Do This?" by Marc Ambinder

Book Review

I just finished reading Barack Obama's book, "The Audacity Of Hope". I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that it's the first book, fiction or non, that I've completed in probably five or six years. Don't know why or when or how I lost the thirst for reading books but somewhere along the way I did. But thats a topic for another post. Reading the book in the context of the completed campaign, election and finally the installation of Obama as president I'm struck by the consistency of his themes across the past several years.

Now that we actually see Obama's ideas being put to practice, it'll be quite interesting to observe how successful he is in holding to his core values. Like some others, I wonder if even at this early stage of his presidency whether many of the central tenets of 'obamalogy' have already been disproven or shown to be frighteningly naive, just as his critics contended during the campaign. Was the new age-y utopian optimism of Obama's "we are the change we've been waiting for" mantra that appealed to so many across the political spectrum but a liberal version of Ronald Reagan's "shining beacon on a hill...morning in america", ie a steaming pile of cult-of-personality bulls**t? Back in the day many liberals decried Reagan's clarion call as post-eisenhower era idealism. But at least Reagan had the experience of the better part of a lifetime to draw upon and time spent as governor of CA to hone his (almost totally wacko in my view) political ideologies. I wonder whether with some of Obama's early struggles we are witnessing in real time some of the tangible disadvantages - - again just as the critics contended - - of choosing inexperienced idealism over experienced idealism? (presuming we desired some great measure of idealism) In my humble opinion the answer is pretty much yes and I find the realization disconcerting at best and frightening at worst. BUT (and its a big butt) I still think new blood was needed in our political dialogue and that Obama, at the least I'd say, has already shaken up the sticks in ways that we cannot even begin to measure. Furthermore, I wouldn't sell this Obama cat short. As with most objective observers, he strikes me as smart as whip, quick witted and willing and able to learn. If, as I'm suggesting above, his amalgam of policies and ideas do in fact embody a sort of ideology, it's an ideology that seemingly allows for great flexibility. This can cut both ways of course, and I think therein lies a paradox: basically we still don't really know what, when it all comes right down to it, Barack Obama stands for. And I must say I hope the watered-down jambalaya of a stimulus bill that he just bet IMO most of the political capital earned by his election on (he'll have to acquire more to get to spend more IMO) doesn't actually reveal the answer: Despite the books and the confidently delivered rhetoric perhaps even he doesn't yet know. I mean, when you listen to his economic surrogate, this Geithner cat, don't you just get the notion he's feeling his way in the dark??

The Banks...

My man Reed just hipped me to a really good short film which explains in easy-to-understand language what's happening with the banks. In short/sum, our system is built on a house-a-cards...I'm sure you're not surprised, but I was! I guess I'm still naive...

Money As Debt...

More on teachers...

Anyone who really knows me has heard me speak about my 'mentor', David Cole. I always think the word 'mentor' is a funny one; there was a saturday morning show during the '70s that depicted the DC comics superhero "Shaazam" as having had a mentor. In the show Shaazam was actually this teenage kid who wandered from town to dusty town alongside his 'mentor', an older man who I want to say was played by Brian Keith (father from "Family Affair" - - now THATs old school!). At the appropriate juncture in each story, the mentor would remind the kid that perhaps the particular situation/predicament called for, uh, Shaazam, and then the kid would do a whirl or something and transform into a grown a** man in red tights, yellow cape and yellow boots. A**es would be kicked, and then kid re-transformed into a kid and he and mentor would walk on into the suneset. So I must admit every time I think of a mentor I think of Shaazam. But what's really funny/interesting is that although I may not be a superhero (at least for all you know, and I'm not telling) what my main man David does for me, how he functions in my life is actually kinda on a similar model. He's always nudging on me to reach for my best, to exceed whatever limitations I may be placing on myself at a given point in time. During a formative period in my early adulthood, David helped me orient myself in some directions I yearned to go in but wasn't sure where to begin. 

Ostensibly, David was another of my guitar teachers and I did learn a great deal about music and guitar from him. However, what he's taught me, and continues to teach, about life has proved of even greater value. I'd say the single greatest impact he's had on my life thus far was in convincing me to go back to college and get a degree. At the time I'd dropped out (flunked out to be precise) of college and truly believed I was done with school. I thought it was boring and repetitive. I'd had a really fantastic prep school education that rendered college a largely moot exercise. It seemed as though there wasn't much more anyone at college could teach me about how to learn. And learning how to learn was all I was really interested in, cause once one learned how to learn one could teach hisself literally anything.  That was one of the handful of lessons I remembered my pop laying on me. By that time I was pretty much convinced that although I admittedly remained pretty ignorant on most topics I was confident I could figure out how to educate myself on a given subject whenever necessary. Sounds pretty arrogant I know, but thats what your SUPPOsed to think when you're young and stupid. Helps one generate the self inflicted misery by which one will emerge from youth and stupidity, or at least reduce one's quotient of youthful stupidity. Anyhow, David told me, hammered at me, that a college degree was a must. That especially for a black man in America a college degree was a shield against forces that, if they weren't actively trying to tear me down, were at the very least not actively seeking to build me up. I'm truly grateful that I listened to him. I'm convinced that possessing a college degree created access for me to a wealth of opportunities that I'd likely otherwise have missed out on. For example, being able to be hired for above entry level work facilitated the early days of my striving to live out my dreams. I'm pretty sure life would of been alot harder edged if I hadn't had that degree to fall back on during some iffy moments.

And I never have to wonder 'what if' I'd finished school. I graduated college cum laude, by the way, missing out on magna cum laude by a couple hundreds of a point. I missed out on magna cum laude because in my last semester I got a "C" in - - get this -- guitar. When I came back to college I largely put down the guitar and focused on studying and my instructor (that means u Wayne Goins!) gave me a "C" for lack of consistent effort. When I told him that his grade had cost me an honor he was shocked and apologetic and offered to change the grade but I told him not to bother. I guess I earned a "C" in his class. Anyhow, the older I get and the less I remember of that young Eddie Crockett chap, I grow more proud and self amused that I took an extended sabbatical from school in which I literally flunked out with a 1.2 gpa, lost my scholarship, did nothing but learn music and sing and dance and run around for as long as it pleased me and then returned to the scene of the crime and showed 'em who's boss. It may not be an accomplishment on the level of my pops, who as he graduated high school at 16 yrs old took the DC city wide exams given to every high school student in various subjects and won the highest score (and the accompanying scholarship money that went along with each) in EVERY subject. Heck it may not even be in the same universe as that amazing academic accomplishment but at least I know that I'm capable of significant achievement when I put my mind towards something...My man David's encouragement facilitated that growing bud of self awareness, along with too many others to mention...

Teachers

Was thinking about teachers yesterday....

Particularly those from whom I learned about music...

This cat at UDC, Calvin Jones, taught me pretty much everything I know -- or should I say what little bit I know -- about how music is constructed, about how to create tension and release with sound. A couple attributes that made him (passed away a couple of yrs ago) a great instructor: he truly had great reverence for his subject matter and also he had acquired true mastery of his subject matter. The one thing he said that really has yielded more and more to me over the years was, "You have to give all of yourself to the music, devote yourself entirely to it." A simple statement perhaps, but one fraught with meaning given the context of what we students knew of his life and the example he'd set in living it. When I knew him he was already close to 70 but one day he confided to me that he couldn't turn off the melodies and arrangements coming to him; that the ideas where coming to him at a greater rate and flow than ever. I learned so much from Dr. Jones just watching him go about his work. He demanded we push ourselves and can remember the joy in his eyes when he heard a new idea from one of us, heard us exploring new harmonic boundaries, reaching for greater sophistications.

So after ruminating on Calvin Jones, perhaps my favorite teacher ever, for awhile I began thinking further back to other teachers and instructors I've had along the way. I pretty much taught myself the basics of guitar. I could already play pretty decently when I figured out I could probably get further a bit faster if I watched and learned how someone more advanced did it. Embarrassingly, I cannot really remember the name of my first teacher; I think it was Derrick Scott. He took one look at me and tried to write me off as a poser. At the time, I was a singer in a hard rock band and probably looked every bit the part of 80's hair band frontman (or at least the black equivalent), so its not surprising he, being an accomplished r&b and jazz musician (his regular gig at the time was with Peabo Bryson), didn't take me too seriously. But somehow I convinced him I was sincere and so he taught me 'rhythm' changes and 'cherokee', two of the building block chord sequences of modern music. And thats pretty much all we worked with for as long as I was with him. Got to respect that, looking back: it was disciplined focus taken to an extreme. Next teacher was the great Jimmy Herring, from the Aquarian Rescue Unit and Allman Bros fame. One thing I remember learning from him was how to walk a bassline, which I immediately thought was the coolest possible thing to do on a guitar. Years later I came to realize how limited Jimmy's skill actually was in this area, which really tripped me out. He's such an amazing and accomplished all around player but even he has/had areas of relative weakness. And so I gradually became aware of how much there is to know about music, and guitar in particular. Helped to begin to instill a greater humility. From there I'd dabble every now and then with a teacher because I'd heard that even Wynton Marsalis still had a teacher/coach and that even the great John Coltrane kept studying with Dennis Sondoli (sp). I learned alot from a cat named Kenny Definnis, who really helped boost my self esteem because he was so encouraging. Took a few lessons from a dude named Denato, can't even remember if that was his first name or last. When I was day dreaming/reflecting on teachers yesterday when I got to Denato a real burst of awareness hit me. I think he may have been my most influential guitar instructor. As I say, I only took a few lessons from him. His personality was really sullen and aloof; in all honesty I thought he was a complete dick and I didn't like being around him. I was sure the feeling was mutual, he struck me as someone who loathed teaching. Especially arrogant, insecure f***ers like I was at the time. So perhaps it gave Denato some measure of pleasure to tell me all about what, in his opinion, I didn't know about music and guitar. Long story short he told me that my weakness was my ears. That I had good ears but that they were untrained. That I was limited not by my technical skill but my ability to hear the kind of harmonies that I sought. I really took the idea of developing my ears fully to heart. Both as a practical matter but also, and perhaps most importantly, as I means towards being more patient and understanding of myself. From then to the present day, I've been more and more aware of what I'm NOT able to hear and so I don't play that which I do not hear. Which is a real trip sometimes because I have studied quite abit of theory and harmony. But only slowly and grudgingly has much of the advanced harmony that I understand intellectually made sense to my ears. So I'd say I've really valued teachers like Denato who've told me pointedly where my weaknesses were. A wild, weirded out cat named John Thomas similarly took me to task a few years later. First thing John said to me after we initially traded solos was, "well you seem to know your chords and harmony pretty well, so we ought to get you to where you can play a decent solo". My feelings weren't hurt; he was a much, much better, more advanced player than I was. Eventually he diagnosed areas of weakness that I still had at the time that I still am chipping away at today. 

I suspect that most of the areas of scholastic weakness and frustrations I've had throughout my life are a result of my intellect being able to move along much faster than my skill level. I'm still working on developing the skill to match what I can comprehend. I suspect this is a really common experience: I'm sure many have at some point thought, "Man! If I could _______ (insert goal here) like I can inside my head, then I'd really be _____ (insert self- serving platitude here)!!" But at least for the past several years I'm not tortured or insecure about it. Time and experience has taught me thoroughly that just like the old school saying, "you are what you eat", I'm good at what I practice, and that my success in any one area of my life at any given time is almost directly a function of what kind of time and energy I devoted to that area. Most folks aren't just 'naturals'; most of us have to work at what we seek to get good at. I run part and parcel with the 'mosts'. But having said that, I've experienced a great many personal victories from having learned how to learn and also how to identify my own weaknesses. I have not always had the time or energy to devote to working on all of my weaknesses, but I do not fear them nor do I accept them. I battle on many fronts and on those fronts that I'm not able to battle at the moment I keep a constant warning out to, uh, myself: "I'm coming for you too..." And although perfection is an impossible goal, I'll keep aspiring to the goal so long as I draw breath. Which is what any good warrior does and has done.