Opera for the End of the World

A WORK IN PROGRESS!

I was sitting here listening to a CD (remember when that meant Certificate of Deposit?) of my daughter singing 'Lo hear the Gentle Lark' at her junior recital in Indiana.  It's a beautiful piece when you can close your eyes and have difficulty distinguishing between flute and voice.  Even though she is a Music major in Vocal Performance she has this problem singing for her mother and me.  She doesn't mind performing on stage in front of others, but she just has a problem singing for family.  Go figure.  Hell, I'll sing in the shower or car (usually, not at the same time), even though I can't carry a note in a number 10 washtub with a chorus of Alabama bullfrogs singing 'The Hallelujah Chorus" as backup.  But even if I had my daughter's pipes, I seriously doubt that I would be singing for others.  I would still keep it to myself.  My friend over at Jumping Off Cliffs wrote about some common feelings that most of us share, like when you think others might be watching you, you forget, they think you are watching them.  What a paranoid world we inhabit.  

I suppose one of the underlying causes of our paranoia might be our innate fear of rejection. Our fear of rejection keeps us from sharing our gifts with others.  Of course, this is not a new concept, I mean Cain whacked Able because he just thought God had rejected him.  If the first poignant story in the Bible is about the power of the rejection, then I figure the ancient Hebrews were on to a meaningful way for us to live our lives in harmony.  Of course, they were not the only culture or religion to understand the power of rejection.  The worst recorded punishment in many cultures was ostracism, being separated from those you admire, respect, and love.  And it is still a strong part of culture.  I remember one of my favorite scenes in Catcher in the Rye was when Holden Caulfield was listening to a piano player in a bar.  Holden reflects that if could play a piano like that he would go home and only play only for himself.   

What gives people that courage to overcome their fear of rejection?  To be able to perform their best, knowing that they will always fall short of perfection?  Is that why we create these facades we present to the rest of the world?  One of the beautiful things about Opera is the ability of the performers to express any emotion in a musical language that is universally understood.  Emotions that human beings rarely express to each other openly, even though we can all relate to them.  I took Dr Atomix as my user name for this blog from the Opera Dr Atomic, about the founder of the Atom Bomb, Robert Oppenheimer.  The night before the Atom Bomb is tested in Los Alamos, 'Oppy' is singing to Gen Groves about how difficult it is for him to lose weight.  Here is a man who will eventually be rejected by his country, worried more about his appearance than he is about the means of destruction  he is about to deliver to the world.  I mean it sounds like a skit from SNL's 'Ricardo's Hideaway', where Billy Crystal says, "You know, Dahlings, it is better to look good, than to be good."  

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."

- Miss Piggy

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another paranoid Zoroastrian Cowboy,

Wondering why that guy over there is staring at me...

Pessioptimistiche

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Ode To A Small Lump Of Green Putty I Found In My Armpit One Midsummer Morning

- by Grunthos the Flatulent

Putty. Putty. Putty.

Green Putty - Green Putty

Grarmpitutty - Morning!

Pridsummer - Grorning Utty!

Discovery.....Oh.

Putty? ..... Armpit?

Armpit ..... Putty.

Not even a particularly

Nice shade of green.

First, thanks to my friend over at MB, for the link to the Onion. I have been suffering through a vicious head cold for the past couple of weeks and nothing seems to help! I have tried copious quantities of Single Malt Scotch Whiskey that are said to have medicinal qualities and tried inhalers that would make Grunthos the Flatulent pass out, but nothing seems to help. So, when I ran across this this book on Amazon, I went into this semi-trance. You know, like when you have a cold, and you're feeling sorry for yourself, and you are laying on the sofa with a limp willie, and drool is coming out the side of mouth, and the T.V. is on, but you're not really hearing it kind of a trance. I was trying to think about how it would feel to be healthy and happy again. Then I thought, if I had never felt like I had been ate by a wolf and shit over the side of a cliff, then I really wouldn't be able to distinguish between feeling good and feeling bad. Or as my friend Jerry Jeff Walker liked to say, "If I'd never felt the sunshine then I would not cuss the rain (if my feet would fit a railroad track, I guess I'd a been a train)."

There are times when you just want to sit and think, when you want to get away from the life-is-a-party way of thinking. But is there a middle way? Can you actually be a stoic, like Marcus Aurelius, without experiencing the extremes? Or, are these extreme feelings part of our genetic make-up, without which we wouldn't know whether to fish or cut bait? I have a psychiatrist (fizzy-key-a-tryst, thank you Ricky Ricardo) friend that tells me all of our emotions are legitimate. They are mechanisms that are triggered to enable us to respond appropriately to different situations. My problema, she tells me is that my emotions are FUBAR, that I REALLY don't know shit from shine-ola. I told her she was making me feel paranoid, she said, "Hon, you ain't paranoid enough!" She did say I had one outstanding quality, that I was a good listener. I asked what that meant. She said, "You're not listening!" I think I'm going to find a male psychiatrist, he will probably be much more sympathetic to my childish needs. He will probably have some of his own childish needs and call me wishy-washy. In which case, I will return to her.

I don't mind being a little paranoid. It's being outrageously maniacal when the phone rings while I'm watching the tube, or cursing the idiot that swerves in front of me on the highway, or being domineering and selfish and wanting it MY WAY (Frank Sinatra summed up Brokow's greatest generation with that song), that causes me consternation. You know I've tried everything, Crystal gazing, Zen, Yoga, being kind to dogs, if it is supposed to help you get in touch with your Inner Tube, then I've tried it. Hell, I've even been to the Unitarian Church! Nothing I've tried has helped me to become more considerate. thoughtful, or kind. Until. Until I discovered I had SLEEP APNEA!

That's me! I had wires hooked up everywhere and the nurse kept assuring me, "Don't worry, we only electrocute about 1 out 10." I went to sleep thinking of that Beavis and Butthead song, "When I was young and had no sense, I took a whiz against the electric fence. Hurt so bad, shocked my balls, took a crap in my overalls." The nurse came in and woke me up again, to see if I was sleeping, what else is new? I finally went to sleep again, only to wake up thinking that a miniature spacecraft had come from Tralfamdore seeking a specimen for their Zoo of the Absurd. It was only the red light shining from the tip of my finger, that was hooked to some device that was measuring the Oxygen in my blood. They told me I snored, LOUDLY. They also told me if I would buy a machine that would pump air into my nose all night, that I would wake up healthy, wealthy, and wise. I asked, "Why can't I just buy a Gaze Ball and stare at it before I go to bed at night?" They said that would work only if I had a machine that blew air into my nose. I know, I know, it's time for a cheap joke about "smoke being blown into another orifice" but I am trying to be more considerate. At least they weren't trying to sell me bundled mortage securites or Credit Default Options. Maybe, they just haven't thought about that, yet.

Until next time,

I remain,

Just another sleepy Zorastrian Cowboy,

Seeking a way to get Dem Deep REMs that involves Summer Glau

Fata Morgana in Texarkana

An invitation to go on a strange trip

Is like a Dance Lesson from God.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Recently, one of my daughters was traveling back to Texas to leave her children before she deploys to Afghanistan for her second tour of duty.  As the careful observer might deduce from the photograph, the kids have racially mixed parents.  Of course, I think they are much more beautiful in person than any photograph could possibly capture, but hey, I am the very proud granddad!  You might think that with a racially mixed President, that we might have seen an end to the racism associated with children of mixed blood, that this bigoted  boogeyman might have been spanked and put to bed.   Not so, in Far East Texas.  It appears as though at least one of them has not gotten the word yet and where's there's one, God knows, there might be TWO. But as the story was related to me there was only one.  This one particular bigot refused to allow my daughter to buy gas, after she saw that my daughter's children were mixed.  It upset my daughter considerably, she tells me it was nothing new, it just surprised her.  It was one of those totally unexpected moments.  Thank God, she does not have her dad's playground sense of justice, she just put the kids back in the car and drove to New Boston and filled her tank.  I would have waited outside the gas station in Texarkana and when the offending attendant walked out, I would have turned up some music real loud, maybe Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', because it would go with the Bruce Willis words from Die Hard I would scream at her, "Yippee Ki Yo Motherfucker", right before I brought the two-by-four down between her running lights.  

Of course, that's just a granddad's instinctive response, my daughter's course of action seems to have been the better choice.  When we were discussing it she said, "Dad, calm down.  What goes around comes around."  I don't know if I believe in Karma all that much, I just think she made a better decision than I would have at that moment.  I'm not sure it's okay to ignore bigotry any time, there comes a time when we do not want bigotry 'coming around'.  I keep asking myself, "How long, Martin?"  How long do we have to put up with this kind of ignorance?  Can change come through education, over time or do you have to be hit between the eyes with a two-by-four?  In California recently, the good folks there voted against a Proposition that would have allowed Gay couples to marry.  The amount of energy spent on trying to limit the rights of different people, could have been better spent on acts of love and kindness expressed by so many of those 'religious folk' that supported banning gay marriage. Why do some folks think that some people are inferior to them?  Where do they get these crazy notions?  What is it that prevents folks from recognizing that we are all on the same trip together?  Does that sound like Karma? Sorry.

Hell, I'm no great fan of any particular religion, but I have noticed that most of them espouse some pretty basic beliefs, i.e., not stealing, not killing, not lying, and respecting your fellow human beings.  Even though most college freshmen can point out the innumerable times that the great religions have lied, cheated, killed, stolen, and reeked havoc on their fellow human beings in the name of God, but they can not give you a very definitive answer about why so many are drawn to organized religion.  My guess is that they need to be told what to do.  They can't read a Bible or Koran or Torah for themselves, so it's easier to be told how to live your life.  People who belong to a particular religious sect act and think that they are a little bit better than those who don't.  So there is a religious elitism involved.  Don't believe me, just look around.  There are 'Christian' bookstores and 'Christian' radio and TV stations, and 'Christian' plumbers!  A Friend of mine said he saw a pickup truck in Deep East Texas with a magnetized sign on the side that read, "His Hands - Plumbing and Septic Tank Services".  It is as though the name itself carries some type of magic, that it makes you better than somebody else.  From this elitism there evolves a type of spiritually rationalized entitlement.  If you don't do it this way you are going to hell Syndrome (or worse yet miss out on the virgins!). It is a form of religious  terrorism that is abhorrent to most rational thinking religious folks.  

So what does all this have to do with the rude ass gas station a-teen-dant? I'm getting there, just give me a minute.  I tried to put myself in Jesus' (Mohammed, Buddha, Moses, etc. take your pick) sandals for a minute and ask myself what would he do to change the situation.  ASIDE:  My wife just walked through the room and wanted to know why I was wearing sandals because it 33 degrees outside.  Then she wanted to know where I got them and how much did I pay etc. for about thirty minutes.  Then I had this AHA moment.  Jesus would have looked at the Gas Station Attendant and said, "Where'd you get dem shoes?'  They would have talked about shoes for awhile and sure enough Jesus would have got his gas and left the attendant feeling loved and special.  Damn, I wish I could be more like that, NAH!  I guess I'm just too damn cynical, but maybe my daughters and granddaughters will have a better luck being the kind of people we all strive to be, walking humbly, seeking justice, and sharing kindness.  Like my youngest daughter the Voice Major likes to say, "It ain't over until the petite lady sings!" 

Until next time, I remain,

Just another Zorastrian Cowboy

seeking to become a costumer for Anna Netrebko  

(I still am having a problem picturing Jesus' with His Hands in the septic tank, but hell, he would probably be the first one in!)