Because....

Black Book 113, April 19, 2023

I have no particular love for the idealized ‘worker’ as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

—George Orwell

Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.

—Ibid

How can one feel so hopeless and hopeful at the same time?

Because of the relentless rain, the explosions, the thundercrack, the gully washer. Because of those tents along the railroad tracks in the rain, the elderly homeless man, drenched, riding a children’s bicycle home from playing chess with a Somali cab driver at a coffee shop. Because of the young woman in the bright orange dress, who we saw going through the trash at the park, and then later, on our way back home from our walk, there she was, running wind sprints and doing pull-ups by herself on the playground.

Because of all those people—so many of them Black—who felt compelled to spend their lives making music and living in poverty. Because we now regard so many of them as legends. Because there were often more people on the stage for their performances than there were in the audience. Because there are people who live for things they love but never entirely understand.

Because love and passion must always be part of anything truly worth doing. Because without real artists and eccentrics who would we be as a people? What would we be as a country? Because I never know what I’m saying or why I’m saying it, but I somehow find a way to keep saying.

Because now they want me to believe that computers can make art, make music, write books, and maybe even come up with a passable imitation of Milford Graves or Jane Bowles or Barry Hannah.

Because almost 40 years ago there existed something like the Sound Unity Festival, and the Peter Kowald Quartet was on a stage—Kowald, Charles Gayle, Rashied Ali, and Marilyn Crispell. And Charles Gayle was living in an abandoned warehouse and eating off the streets, and Don Cherry’s band at that festival probably had at least 15 members, including dancers, and there’s no way any of those people were making any money, and most of them had been making music and not making any money for decades, and the Sound Unity Festival ran for three days at the CUANDO Community Center, 9 Second Avenue, in New York, and tickets were $9, and besides the aforementioned artists, the line-up included Peter Brotzmann, David S. Ware, Ahmed Abdullah, Bill Dixon, Jimmy Lyons, Charles Tyler, Frank Lowe, Grachan Moncur III, Jameel Moondoc, several dance companies, and a performance of “A Thousand Cranes Opera,” which featured a chorus of 40 children.

Because what the fuck?

Because how many people paid to attend this festival? 100? 300? Because, regardless, no one made any money. Because what’s the percentage of people who feel compelled to make art in this country who ever make any money?

Because as depressing as that all is, I nonetheless find it wildly inspiring. A dream and a scene like that is what I’ve been chasing all my life, and it’s probably too late to stop chasing it now.

Because this is who I am. Because the first time I heard music that sounded like the music those people played—and this was now more than 40 years ago—I didn’t understand it, but I knew instinctively those were my people.

Because I’m for the dreamers. I’m for the weak, the poor, the fallen, downtrodden, the suffering. I’m for the grieving, the sick, the uninsured, the homeless, the addicted, lonely, and unloved. I’m for the lost, the underdog, the strays, sad sacks, those who don’t have enough of anything. I’m for the people who learn to hide. I’m for the invisible, the unseen, the overlooked; the outcasts with the courage to get loud; the refugees, the people who drift from place to place, looking for a job, an audience, attention, a place to live, dignity, respect, someone to love. I’m for the tenant over the landlord, the employee over the employer, labor over capital, the woman or man who has nothing over the man who has not just everything he needs, but much more than everything he needs.

Because I despise entirely unregulated capitalism, oligarchs who aspire to be slave owners, Wall Street, a judicial system that has become one of the most powerful engines of injustice and inequality ever assembled. Because I’m disgusted by people who own private jets, yachts, and private islands, people who pay no taxes, yet time after time get tax breaks and government funding and bailouts; by people who refuse to pay their employees a living wage; by wealthy people who are inconvenienced by homelessness, crime, poverty, protests; people who look away from anything at all that offends their sense of security and threatens their charmed lives, and then deny the reality of all the things they refuse to see.

Because I despise narrow bigots and propagators of hate who consider themselves Christians, people who spend their lives protesting abortion—or even birth control—who think it’s a perfectly legitimate and virtuous thing for the State to perform ‘legal’ executions and to starve poor children and families.

Because I despise people who’ve read nothing, been nowhere, and don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck they’re talking about, who can’t distinguish obvious, outrageous lies from the truth; adults who lack the moral compass of the average five year old, and who can sit for hours every day passively absorbing corrosive, poisonous trash masquerading as entertainment and pumped up by tens of millions of dollars worth of advertisements paid for by corporate criminals.

Because I despise a culture [sic] that is slowly killing off everything that’s actually deserving of that name.

Because I am enraged by all this shit, this landscape increasingly devoid of any consideration of aesthetics, that’s surrendered beauty; a country that’s killing dreams, aggressively creating inequality and injustice, and choking off basic human rights and stripping human beings of dignity and hope.

And because I despise American Exceptionalism, the greatest and most pernicious of all the lies that we’ve been force-feeding our children for generations.