Eating Rice

The Ray Rice elevator assault and the harsh career sentence have been on my mind today.  Ray was the huge star of my high-school alma mater.  His adorable Grandma knows my Mom.  I have watched football with quasi-maternal passion since he became a Raven.  At 5' 8" he was not born with the physique of a typical running back.  He developed his skills, he worked at his game with fierce dedication.

My doctor was a Big Ten college all-star.  He has explained to me many times the mindset of a linebacker-- the brainwave-warping, combat-style mind-fuck the coaches beat into their players so they come out onto the field ready to take bullets, to smash into defensive walls with the intensity and drive of human tanks, with neck-breaking concussional force and no fear.  Professional football is a rough sport.  The laxity of penalties for what looks to me like near-gratuitous violence in random play is baffling.  Players are paralyzed, even killed… and who is held responsible?  No one.  

I am not defending domestic violence.  I think physical assault by either men or women is not just a sign of dysfunction but a relationship death sentence.  I also think the line between aggressive passion and injury has been blurred.  How many of our punk-rock and hip-hop romantic couples have sported casts and black eyes?  Of course, there is a double standard for men and women.  It's rare that we condemn a woman for bullying her man, for inciting a physical response which might be acceptable between two men, but always deemed inappropriate when the inciter/victim is a woman.  This is one area in which inequality among sexes rules.  

Cut to the media-hyped image of that Columbia student carrying her mattress around as her senior thesis.  Don't get me started, our beloved Joan Rivers would comment.  First of all, in my day a thesis was something scholarly and important--- a major piece of research which prepares you for future theses and books-- something which makes a contribution to available literature and breaks new intellectual ground.  Granted what now passes as high art, performance art-- is a sad minor reflection of the intentions of the serious contemporary artists who established the 'canon'.  The fact that this is passed off as thesis material would make me think hard before I'd shell out the kind of tuition Columbia charges.  I wonder how desperately this girl competed for her acceptance to an urban Ivy League school-- the very one whose reputation she is now hell-bent on challenging.

Again, I'm not trivializing the trauma of date-rape.  But is her personal vendetta against this man really the responsibility of the University?  Should an institution be pressured to eject another student because this attention-mongering person can't legally handle her own affair?  Sex is an adult-ish activity.  There is always some element of personal choice in consensual sex; some boundaries crossed or loosened.  A college student is presumed to be mature enough to make some personal decisions.  Whether and where she failed to control the consequence of her action…. is another issue.  But how is an academic umbrella institution responsible for the stupid action of one of its students, based on testimony of a mishap which she'd declined to report for several months.  She certainly isn't shy.  Obviously a bit of a red flag there.  I just find her annoying and juvenile.  Why doesn't she take her mattress to Africa and demonstrate against serious violations against women?

Recently I was friended on Facebook by someone whose name was vaguely familiar.  He's a well respected music producer who had massive success in the 1980's.  I had a nauseating recognition when I looked at old photos.  In the mid 1980's, this same man had asked me to meet him to discuss my charming and original cassette of home-recorded songs which had somehow found their way to his massive desk.  Not only flattered but thrilled, I went to see him at his 5-star midtown hotel where he explained that because he was expecting an important conference call, we'd have to meet in his private suite.   The guy had a gorgeous wife and kids--- I dismissed any trepidation… and ended up, 2 hours later, with my clothes ripped and tattered, vomiting in the elevator on the way down.  I lost my keys, my wallet, and my musical innocence that night, even though I managed to fight him off.  I ended up moving to the UK and never again submitted my music or had any vision of pop-star or songwriting success.  Did I petition his label or his major company to dismiss him?  Did I file charges or even tell anyone outside of my husband (with whom he'd worked, the asshole!)?  I did not.  I vowed I would never again meet anyone in a hotel room without love or witnesses or body guards.  

This week I've been reading one of Vargas-Llosa's political novels 'Death in the Andes' and in a pivotal scene, a pedestrian young guard bursts in on one of the top military officers who is beating the crap out of a woman while she screams and begs for mercy.  The guard kills the officer, kidnaps the woman in a car where she proceeds to scream and protest that she loved the officer--- he was her lover and she begged him to beat her violently as sexual foreplay.   Irony.  

I don't know what happened in that Columbia student's room.  I do know my son had a few psychotic girlfriends in college who threatened to slit their wrists if he didn't spend the night with them, and then reported him as a deadbeat Dad because he failed to pay for a pregnancy test for one of them who happened to be on the pill.  It was trouble.  Especially when two of them teamed up and went to his Dean.  But it was trouble for us-- the family.  I dealt sympathetically with the girls and chastised my son appropriately.  I didn't take it to the University.  Hopefully, given this generation's short memory, the facebook world has long dismissed charges, and the girl, after a few other dramatic incidents, changed schools and moved on.  But in general--- expecting your parents, or your affiliated parental-designated institution, to take a position in your personal misfortunes--- seems not just juvenile but absurd.  

I also don't know what happened outside of Ray Rice's elevator; there were unfortunately no cameras in mine.  But what I don't understand is why this is the jurisdiction of the NFL.  Domestic abuse is all too common among football players, partially for the way they are programmed to compete; partially because they are often victims of women who pursue athletes the way they pursue rockstars-- -for money, for the thrill of being next to the limelight, for the drama.  Some of these players are boys who have spent so much of their lives learning plays and practicing, adopting a 'violent' competitive mindset-- -they are relatively unequipped to deal with relationships.  I have read umpteen psychologists' assessments of the financially dependent abused woman refusing to testify against her mate.  But Janay is the mother of their child.  She is his wife, as well as the designated victim, and she is in his corner.  I feel she has been denied a voice.  I am not condoning his behavior, but I am condemning the public 'stoning' of what I consider a private affair.

Just as we all have our constitutional rights, we have the right of choice.  If Rihanna loves Chris Brown after all, so be it.  If we all listened to our mothers and married that nice boring boy next door at 21, what guarantee is there that he will not become an alcoholic or a wife-beater?  Besides, there would be a lot less great sex in our world.  And without instagram and youtube, we might have retained our constitutional right to Privacy, and maybe, just maybe… Ray Rice would have learned a lesson, managed his affairs, and his wife and daughter would have kept their VIP stadium seats and happily witnessed a winning season.

As for the Mattress Girl, she needs to re-read The Princess and the Pea… and when she describes with great poise to the media how she shakes in her bed every day… I give her an F on her thesis, a D in Drama, a C for acting, and I quake in my chair here realizing I have spent precious minutes on her pathetic vendetta when there are serious social and human problems.  Since the priorities of higher education have apparently evaded her tiny petty world-view… perhaps a 2-semester suspension would better serve her here.  Let her eat Rice.

Clam I Am

 I woke up this morning with the sense of an ebbing anthology of dreams like an emotional tornado that reverse-spins and zaps itself out of your head leaving you sort of hung-over and used.  You try to catch them by the tail--- some of them are things you miss--- people you will never see again--- yourself as a young carefree girl, in your prime--- babies you will never have…and song--- there is often a soundtrack-- -sometimes symphonic and full and dramatic-- sometimes just lyrics--- things you are writing and they evaporate as you wake… you lose them… you, the composer--- the dream conductor… and you can’t find them…. They crash and burn into morning ash.

Today this annoying sort of Bobby McFerrin melody cycling--- ‘Hap-py as a clam…’..I lost the other lyrics but surely they were equally annoying and baffling… after all, what does a clam have to make them feel good?  It is like a bad cliche'd 70’s commercial theme song…and I wrote this thing-- or my subconscious did--- I keep searching for a meaning--- since it won't erase itself or dissolve like the others did--maybe an anagram… an irony… a reference to an ex-boyfriend or Louis Carroll…   or an old ghost haunting me with irony?

Irony—tonight I will want to play something Hooker or Wolf  like Smokestack Lightnin’ and then will remember half the audience hears this as a viagra commercial.  Why must they ruin these things?  Does anyone put Michelangelo on a box of condoms?  Actually they might have.  Why can’t they use Beyonce?  She is apparently a sexual catalyst--- although for me she is the musical version of the kind of  ‘hard-bang’ that is the very antithesis of sex.  Knock yourself out, Jay-Z, with your endorsements and commercials and your Baby Blue.  Isn’t your empire huge enough?  Does your wife now have to put her hip jerks on not just HM but a can of coke?  A symbol of ‘the people’…And HM…affordable fashion--  fashion McDonald’s servers can buy, can wear to The Club, although how minimum-wage earners afford a night out is beyond me.    I guess you need the extra income, Jay and B, for your 529.  How about 529 million?  And while we’re there, about the 529 million poor kids who are starving while they listen to your latest boring album?  Sorry.  The clam song is getting louder….

I’m not an old f--- .  I am totally enchanted by Rihanna—in all her flawed exquisite nudity and attitude.  I love her voice (I’ve yet to recall Beyonce’s?), her presence, her fearless performance.  I feel her—her Chris Brown distress, her wounded brave sexuality.  But I admit I am sick to death of sexual enhancement products mercilessly advertised on late-night TV….I mean, with all the uncensored videos, frank language and Victoria’s Secret-worthy popstars--- is America losing its mojo? 

My own son last night called me from a late-night food stop.  Jesus, he said--- there was this incredible girl next to me, totally flirting-- -and I couldn’t think of a thing to say… and there she goes, now.  Shit.  My own ex-bad-boy, teenage heartbreaker… I mean…with all the ultra-sexually charged music, all the popping and humping and the marijuana and club culture—unable to flirt? Back in my time…who thought of having something clever to say… or anything?  There was the vibe-- -and then there was—well.. there was before, during and after…

How about this:  in my neighborhood--- where I often scan the street—the actual street--- for clues to finding the underlying poetry of my strange and diverse local culture…looking for a graffiti message, a pointing glove, deflated and useless Get Well balloons—trampled bouquets, a shining dime…something… not a single day goes by when I don’t see—lying in the road, along with the flattened rodents and unfortunate pigeons….a discarded condom or a used tampon.  What is the meaning of this? Who are these people?  Strangers who meet in a taxi and throw the evidence out the window?  My neighbors?  I mean, are they afraid the police will search the trash cans like on Law and Order? 

Okay…the clam song is getting louder.  I’ll keep my lips sealed tonight when the Times Square police search my guitar case because Jay Z has decided to occupy a midtown rooftop for yet another of his public extravaganzas which will gnarl traffic and feed his blue ego with thousands of greedy tons of caviar and Cristal while just a few blocks away I’ll be trying to drown out my Clam song with some actual blue blues for the 2-digit paycheck for which we real musicians play out our hearts. 

And I’ve just learned from Urban Dictionary that the unshortened expression is ‘happy as a clam at high tide’ because clams can only be harvested at low tide… so maybe the message is that it is enough for me to make it home unscathed, uncaptured, unraped, unmutilated, and undead on my hopefully running subway and crosstown bus, with my cold summer dinner in a foil container,  my old guitar, and my heart full of lyrics and dreams.

    

Crouching Bloggers

Longest hiatus yet. Having a blog-identity crisis. Every housewife on the block has one now— the amount of verbal waste on the internet is colossal. If words were pennies, we could pay the Goldman Sachs bonuses for the next 4000 years in just a week.

I’ve been cutting back on so much, I started to hold back on verbal output. I almost posted one last month called ‘Crouching Tiger’. I always hated golf. Who was the comedian who once described golf as the sport invented so white people can dress like black people? For me, I can’t take seriously any sport that doesn’t involve either sweat or speed. And Elliot Spitzer already walked in his shoes. Why do we act so horrified? There were no murders. Tiger Woods makes a very poor poster child for adultery. He’s too nerdy. Swedes (hence the wife) like golf. They also like black people and they don’t have a lot of Afro American celebrities there. I’m sure he doesn’t fit the stereotype. No Chris Brown style beatings. In fact, it was the wife who might have hit Tiger. Which iron did she use, because she got quite a bit of mileage with it?

Now that we have that out of the way…. Aren’t there larger all-American dreams which have been shattered of late? Like the entire economy? Like the US Treasury? Like the MTA which is again crying poverty while their legal staff is brushing D&G shoulders with the bankers who at Miami-Basel (timed of course to coincide with bonus-week) shopped until they dropped for 7-figure paintings, to keep their cash balance just under conspicuous?

At the end of 2009 I found myself pathetic and nostalgic-- missing Mary Travers, the Village Gate, the Ramones, Andy, Max’s, juke box longing. Eleven days into the New Year I am missing other things-- the stray dog I found on Madison Ave in 1979, the innocent days of serial killers in Manhattan, waiting for a boy to call, the Star Spangled Banner sign-off, curly phone cords and rotary dials, neon, subway grafitti, getting naked under winter sheets with a boy I scarcely knew. It is not just getting older, it is the whole media/internet-rounding of edges and corners…
I feel looted…I feel robbed of some kind of innocence… like finding your parents are bad.

But what are bad people like now? People have secrets… we are exposed but they have secrets, more than ever… worse secrets. People that torture animals, children. People that watch this stuff on the internet. Corporate secrets. The kind that enabled our financial wizards to rob us blind and make us pay for it. The gilt-coated Goldman Sachs CEOs are going to enforce charitable giving quotas for those who earn enough to feed whole continents and whose daughters probably puke up their $1000 sushi dinners in sonic self-cleaning toilets. No DNA in the bowl.

The cancer rate is going down because no one wants to go to the doctor. We are sick of co-pays and information they give us to make pharmaceutical stocks go up. Death could be a relief. Galaxies of information--- green products, clean energy… and still there are evil Nazi lovers, the guy in line behind me at the grocery store--the haters. The lady beside me in the gym who makes a comment.. .we assume others are tolerant… and then they say something that reveals the vituperative soul they are and we try to create a few extra inches between treadmills.

Golf.. I always knew it was a sinister sport… it always disgusted me. Even the word—nerdy and gagging.

Last night on the train home, there were some spectacular freaks of the kind I haven’t seen in years, except nightmares. One guy with a stench so bad the whole car was empty. A smell beyond putrid human waste and rot. And on the next car, where there were 2 separate guys singing for their supper or their fix---whatever… arguing… engaged in a tournament of God blessing to death the tired and drunk passengers who mostly have their ears stuffed with hip-hop and are too overdressed in the cold and lazy to reach for their pockets and you can’t put debit cards into cups. But on the car, across from me—a lady… praying maybe, itching like mad, stuffing her hands down everywhere and scratching like a mad dog. And standing by the door a Jesus-type black man with the gnarled dreads, and sandals…in this frigid January… one foot bound with filthy bandages and oozing… oozing a color not in any paintbox. The other foot—the unbandaged one---dried to a shade of bone---and the toes seemed to have dropped off—like old tree branches. And the guy is wiping up something on the floor – some fluid which seemed to have leaked out of him, and he is cleaning it up with a napkin. Do you try to pray? Do you ask God to bless the stenchy-squishy beyond-medical-helpless? Maybe this is Jesus. Not the handsome sexy one everyone wanted to fuck in Hollywood versions. Maybe also this is a man who just tortured and raped another dysfunctional freak. Maybe he is serving some kind of celestial sentence for unspeakable acts. I can't tell anymore. I can't figure anything out and I hear myself wish people a Happy New Year and resolve to keep on creating music I think is important and pray for some kind of posthumous acceptance. And part of me on that train wants to vomit and part of me wants to cry and part of me hates myself for being so fucking cowardly and helpless that all I can do is go home and post worthless words like trash in the endless dump of the web.