Our lives have become maddeningly bland.
I can't figure out whether we actively set out to do this to ourselves or whether it was done to us by the ruling aristocracy.
I continue to read Charlie Parker's biography. This is one of those books that devotes fifty pages to his childhood, in great detail. The author does a fantastic job of recreating the atmosphere of the time.
That atmosphere was rich. It was exciting. It was crackling and vibrant.
Parker grew up in Kansas City. Apparently Kansas City was a hot bed of jazz at the time, as well as corruption and nefarious activities and people.
As the author, Stanley Crouch describes it...."the mayor was a pawn, the city boss was a crook, the police were corrupt, the gangsters had more privileges than honest businessmen, and the town was as wild with vice as you could encounter short of a convention of the best devils in hell."
The wide open atmosphere contributed to the development of amazing musicians.
John Tumino, manager of the Jay McShann Orchestra: "In Kansas City the joints didn't have locks on the doors. Threw them away. Didn't need them. They were never closed anyway. ............................All this meant you could have a good time morning, noon and night. That stimulated God knows how much music - music of all kinds - and the musicians playing so much they got better than just about anybody in the country. .......These guys were playing all the time, long hours, and then they went out jamming and might not get home until the next afternoon."
The city was not far removed from cowboy days, the tradition of wildness and lawlessness carrying over to gangster times. Kansas City was considered a safe place for guys like Dillinger to hide out when they were on the run. Nobody would rat him out there.
Racial tension was heavy duty as black people fought to just be who they were, to get fair chances and respect.
There was a gay community that was brazen about expressing who they were, with Halloween parades and other celebrations where they dressed as they pleased. Like black people, they knew how to walk the fine line between personal expression and angering the authorities.
This is a unique moment and set of circumstances in time, but the point is as you look back upon our history you continually come across moments like this that were full of life. Full of struggle and the hope for transcendence. Evil things, good things, evolving things. But always a sense of moving forward, of a sense of the possibility of triumph.
As history moves forward towards today it becomes increasingly less thrilling. Watered down, compromised, diluted to the point of lifelessness.
Our lives today are consumed with technology at the expense of human interaction. Corporations abuse employees, the environment and the concept of morality while stuffing cash into their collective mattresses. Politicians spit on their constituents and kiss the asses of their financial supporters, while simultaneously redefining the definition of stupidity and pettiness. Concepts like getting ahead in the world and ideals like hope become increasingly more restricted. Restricted to the point where the 99% benignly spend their lives avoiding risk (and the potential of reward) because the odds are not just stacked against them, they are impossible.
There is no sense of adventure. Of struggling to overcome. There is no life.
The things that make a life worthwhile, make it exciting and interesting, are disappearing before our very eyes.
There existed between 1987 and 2005 a blues club in Antrim, NH known as The Rynborn. It was a premier club featuring talented musicians on a daily basis. People came from Massachusetts, Maine, New York and sometimes farther away to dig the atmosphere and be amazed by the musicians.
The place was revered.
It closed in 2005. The economy? Lack of support?
How is it that people could get out after the depression to see Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie and countless other supremely talented musicians, but they can't make it out in the 21st century to dig heavenly talent.
One small example. But a sign. A sign of the boring place we are headed.
Actually it may be that we are not headed in that direction anymore.
Could be we are already there.
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