If Everyone Were My Dad...

My dad once said, "If everyone in the world were Joe Matt (his professional music name), a little girl could wander out into the streets of New York City at three in the morning and she would be brought home safe."

I think I have mentioned this statement before. But he was right. My dad -- and you, I'm sure; and I -- would never hurt a little girl. But there are people who would. 

Can you imagine? There are people who would hurt a lost little girl. 

This morning, I heard a musician being interviewed on the radio. He is releasing an album of retro-sounding songs (70s era-sounding) and one of his songs, intentionally echoing Marvin Gaye, simply asks: How long will racism and disharmony last? Why can't we see each other as brothers and sisters? It's 2024. 

Apparently "we" can't. But I can. And you can, right? I see my fellow humans as just that: my fellow humans. Each of us is flawed, many of us are annoying and we all clearly see our physical and cultural differences. No one is actually "color-blind." But I see all humans as, intrinsically, of equal worth. Misdeeds can change that (like hurting little girls), but intrinsically, from the starting line of birth, we are all brothers and sisters who deserve equal treatment. 

Who are these people who aren't like you, me and my dad?

This morning, I heard more about Ukraine. More than 20,000 children have been taken hostage by Russia. Children. Where are the "Joe Matts"? 

Either we are all awful, or George Carlin was right that individuals are great, but when they get into groups the problems start. 

Are the majority forced into, say, war, by the minority who have the power? Or, do the minority with the power figure out a way to spread a disease through the minds of the common person that convinces those people that atrocities are ok because of circumstance?

All I can think when I see or hear news about Ukraine or Gaza is: people are horrible. I can see one side as more justified than the other, but, in the end, as Steinbeck once said, "All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal." In this sense, human kind is a failure. It's hard to believe we haven't put killing others behind us.

Will we ever just stop hurting each other? It seems like a such a simple task. Carl Sandburg had the solution: "Someday they will give a war an nobody will come." 

Well, if everyone were me or my dad (or you?) this could happen. War could stop tomorrow. Cruelty could stop tomorrow. 

But how many of us are like Joe Matt? Can there be so many cruel people in the world? Maybe most of us are evil. Maybe most of us are racist. Maybe most of us want to hurt others because it makes us feel powerful. 

I don't know. Maybe you are not as good a person as my dad and me. Somebody isn't.

A Literal Kick in the Face

I just kicked my dog in the face. Hard. So hard, it hurt my foot. In fact, my heel is still throbbing. And do you know where she is? She is sitting here with her head on my knee, looking up at me with eyes brimming over with love.

Before you call in the animal cops, I need to explain that it was an accident. My wife threw a toy for her to fetch and, as the dog was speeding by my chair, after it, I tried to lift my leg out of the way. As my foot came up, I planted a karate heel right into her snout.

No blood or broken teeth, but I sure thought there would be. She seems fine. In fact, she is better off than I, because I feel horrible, even though it was purely accidental.

Which one of us is superior? Does her total lack of anger, as a dog, make her inferior, in either a scientific or a philosophical sense? Or does it make her superior?

I suppose it comes down to the difference between "can't" and "won't." She is not smart enough, being a canine creature, to conceptualize resentment. (At least, I don't think so.) That would be "can't," of course. If someone accidentally were to kick me in the face, I would be really mad. I might even lash out.

Hurricane Sandy

Cot: "The Storm"

It will be a quick one today. As I write, 8:30 am, Monday, October 29, 2012, the state of New Jersey is about to be directly hit with "the second biggest hurricane in recorded history." Our house right in its projected path, though not on the coast, where the most devastating damage is already being done. They say the shoreline will be permanently altered by this one. When a storm is being called worse than Grace -- The Perfect Storm -- it's nothing to sneeze at.

So, we're in a historic moment, here. There are some who are really aware of that and who are intrigued, as I am, and there are others who don't care. There are those who are petrified. There are those who are not the least bit fazed. There are those who are courageously defiant in the face of danger.

Just so, as with most remarkable things, this storm sets up a microcosmic portrait of humankind: the fools, the paranoid ones; the heroes; the simply and rationally prepared -- they are all exposed by their reactions to Hurricane Sandy.

The Heart of Hope

Most people agree that it is always uplifting and jolly to have me as a Facebook friend. For instance, the other day, I posted this, in the wake of the recent American embassy attacks:

Let me get this straight: some ass in California releases an offensive video about Islam and those who are offended by it go on a killing spree against America. Explain to me, again, how it is that I'm not supposed to lose my faith in humanity?

My first friend to respond was Denise, who said, quite powerfully (and very sweetly): "Your children."

At first, this made me feel nice -- I got that warm belly feeling. I thought: Yeah. My kids are good people. They will do good things. Maybe there is hope. 

But then I thought about it more. They are good kids. But guess where their worst behavior happens? In groups.

They're not bullies. They're not evil. In fact, they are so exceptionally well-behaved, I often find myself wishing, just once, they would do something wrong in school -- just for the sake of establishing a little bit of a sense of power and a tiny pinch of healthy rebellion in their hearts.

Good Guys and Evil Deeds

I was listening to a radio interview earlier today and the guy being interviewed had travelled with former President Bill Clinton. He said, just in the course of conversation, "Yeah -- Clinton is a good guy."

This got my gears turning with thoughts about human nature versus human behavior. After a few miles of contemplative driving (and then getting snapped out of it by a panicked thought that I was extremely low on gas and had forgotten to stop with no more stations for miles, even though I actually had stopped and filled-up somewhere in the midst [and in the mist] of my little conceptual journey) the question formed itself: Can a guy who does heinous things be a "good guy."

This is one of those occasions on which I am sure someone will swoop in and explain to me that Cerebellus Maximus, in the third century, asked this very question -- but, so it goes. I guy can't have read everything, you know. (Someone once mentioned a book that I hadn't read and I told her I hadn't read it. "Aren't you, like, a literature guy?" she responded, aghast. Apparently, we "literary guys" are supposed to have read everything ever written.)

Anyway, old Bill is famous for lots of things -- like having been a not-so-bad-at-all President. He blew a mean sax, too. Unfortunately, he was also in the habit of keeping company with a certain infamous White House intern who had a similar talent, if you take my meaning. In short, the guy cheated on his wife. Or, more accurately, I think: he cheated on his family. That's the way I see it, anyway.

Fat Man and Little Boy

On August 6 and August 9, 1945, at Truman's order, the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively.

As many as two-hundred and forty-six thousand people died as a result: soldiers, civilians, men, women, children and little babies.

It's one thing to grow up knowing this happened -- that it effectively ended the World War II; to bubble in the right answers about it on the history tests...but to really think about it...

How can I offer any comment?

During the Korean War (in which our soldiers were equipped with battered and rusty rifles from the previous war), General MacArthur proposed dropping nuclear bombs on North Korea in order to end the spread of Communism and to achieve the objective of the campaign. He was removed from command by Truman.

Why?

I never have trouble sleeping, but when naked, bone-melting horror presents itself, the nights are very long.

"The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man." ~ Nietzche

The Giant and the Jerk

I'm working on a book review right now of an excellent (and only) complete biography of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, the great science fiction writer/scientific speculation guru, best known, in popular spheres, for his collaboration with Stanley Kubrick for the enigmatic and groundbreaking film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Neil McAleer's biography is called Visionary: The Odyssey of Sir Arthur C. Clarke. My review will soon appear in When Falls the Coliseum, so I won't say much here, outside of the fact that I am finding the book extremely interesting and insightful -- especially as a guy who teaches science fiction literature.

Clarke was an amazing force in shaping scientific thought (and action), not just through his fiction but through his non-fiction writing and personal appearances.

One section from the book really strummed a sour chord in me, because the incident in it is, as far as I'm concerned, the perfect example of the worst possible kind of normally functioning person in our modern world. It is people like the technician in the excerpt below who cloud the skies and keep the planes of the intelligence and the enthusiasm grounded. It is people like this who slow the essential work that humanity needs to do in order to save itself. (I know I sound dramatic, but -- damn it, I feel this way about shallow people. It is this kind of apathy and one-dimensionality that I try to fight against, every day, in the classroom.)

Indeed...

This just popped into my head today as I was talking with a class that is writing a paper about school violence.


My father once said:

”If  everyone in the world were me, a little, three-year-old girl could wander out of her front door at three o’clock in the morning, out into a big city, and she’d get picked up and find herself safely at home before she knew it . But everyone in the world is not me. “

Amen, Dad. Amen.


Seems so basic, doesn't it?

My dad, arranger and composer, Joe Matt (his professional name from a
time when it was best not to be obviously Italian -- center),
in the studio with celebrated
jazz organist
Joey DeFrancesco (2nd from left)

Kindness Desperation

Recently, some friends posted this video:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

It's an undeniably cool thing to watch. Cute as heck, for sure, especially because the big, tough secret service guys are handling ducklings. But some comments people made reminded me of how desperate we are for acts of kindness these days. A lot of people made reference to compassion and the beauty of simple acts. This is all true.

Blame Yourself: The Egyptian Soccer Riot

You might have heard that seventy-four people died in a brawl between rival soccer fans in Egypt.

People are sickening, sometimes, maybe not so much for their tendency to do violence for just about any conceivable reason, but for their immediate reactions of external blame. A man who was at the game says, in a Yahoo interview:

“Those in charge are responsible for this... And the military hasn’t provided a safe and secure environment. This is a national tragedy and those in charge bear the blame.”

Astounding. So it is not the fault of the losers who have so little control over their emotions that a mere sporting event can turn them into a mindless, homicidal mob. It is the government's fault. (The guy does accuse police of not having acted to stop the riot. That complaint, I get: they should have helped stop things before -- and even after -- got out of control. That's what police are for.)

Yeah, yeah. I know. Mubarak is gone after thirty years and everything is in a tizzy. But I'm talking about individual human responsibility. To me, that doesn't change. We each have a responsibility to be better than that. In fact, if one can't be better than these animals, one has serious problems.

Manpower

Lights flash to keep cars out of the roadwork zone. Police cruisers are parked on either side. Great, growling machines with shining hydraulic tubes and flashing lights slam and scratch and bully rock and sand into piles as tall as houses, metal teeth raking against the condemned asphalt.

One of Hine's famous Empire State photos

The air is a chaos of sounds thrown from machines capable of feats mankind once only dreamed of. The traffic is disturbed and re-routed. People curse; impatient officers wave them on. The machines press around them all. Other machines stop and start, alive with the impatience of their driver-brains.

But at the very edge, two men in yellow work helmets, jeans and luminescent vests stand at the edge of the project, where the dismantled road meets the active road. There, with gloved hands, they handle small, work-battered shovels with surgical precision, carefully scraping dirt and rubble away from what will soon be the seam between the roads. One after another, small shovels full are deposited into a wheelbarrow that has two wooden handles whose ends are worn smooth from contact with human hands; at its front, greyed by dust, a tiny wheel that is the ancestor of all this mechanical might waits humbly to make the impossible possible.

The Weight of Darkness

If time is a line, let's lift off of it and sail up above it, back past years and decades, over fields scarred with muddy trenches and flashing insanely with artillery fire; over revolutionary battlefields, where men fire in formal lines, and above great, concrete-grey cities that rose out of small brown towns nestled next to rivers -- rivers that have watched and watched and watched, bringing life and then taking away the refuse of the hundreds and then the thousands and then the millions as years worked slowly around them all.

Then, let's alight, somewhere far away from the city, at the edge of a great forest, on a night in high summer, in a time when there were no machines but those bound with rope and cobbled together out of wood and propelled only by tired beasts -- a time when a few carried steel and many laboured at the plow to pay tithes to those few . . .

by Arthur Rackham

Paint me, then, a man sitting in his small hovel, children sleeping, wife sleeping since sunset. See that man peering through a crack in the boards, fearful, as he watches golden lights among the trees, flitting around, blinking brightly and then fading and then blinking again. He knows who they are: the stealers of dreams -- fairies who fly into the mouths of sleeping innocents, to take out their souls and to fly them around the gaping night in order to gather dreams.

An Open Letter to Humanity

Dear Humanity,

I'm really trying -- really, really trying not to get overwhelmed and turn my back on you. I mean, like every other thinker, I have flirted with the whole cabin-in-the-woods thing. I know that probably wouldn't make me happy, though, because I'm torn: I like people, but I am disgusted by humanity.

Every time a person sits alone in a studio or with his or her books, lab equipment or a pen and creates a thing of beauty or of goodwill, my heart fills with admiration and love for the human animal and its endeavors. But every time that thing of beauty or of good will gets handed to the masses, the masses find a way to tear it apart or corrupt it.

In short, the atom bomb was not really Oppenheimer's fault, was it? Muhammad and Jesus are not to blame for war, the Inquisition, persecution, hate, or terrorism, are they?

And art -- such wonders get spun at the hands of solitary geniuses, then we turn those wonders into cliche by merely sharing them -- we water them down until they become almost laughable because we want everyone, whether they are at the level of the geniuses or not, to swim in the waters of greatness. "To be or not to be," is an apartment number joke now. The Mona Lisa is so common a sight that it has become impotent. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony has been turned into a cartoon by the cartoons.